The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Monday that the world will have a shortage of cholera vaccines by 2025 and that one billion people in 43 countries could be infected with the disease.

In a warning about the increase in cholera cases around the world, the United Nations (UN) agency stresses that this "is an emergency and immunization needs to be stepped up to contain it.

UN News reported that the biggest problem is access to the vaccine. A WHO partnership in this area, the Gavi Global Vaccine Alliance, has already warned that the shortage of doses is expected to persist until 2025.

For Gavi, it is possible to guarantee the delivery of doses for large-scale preventive vaccination by 2026, but for this to happen, countries need to act urgently.

Currently, according to WHO data, 24 countries have cases of cholera. And according to the UN, the disease could spread to 43 nations, putting a billion people at risk.

Among the factors for people becoming infected are poverty, conflicts, climate change and displacement.

Mozambique is one of the countries with an increase in patients in the decade of seasonal change in cholera cases. The risk is that there will be setbacks, after advances made in controlling the disease in previous decades.

The WHO estimates that 10 million more units of vaccine were used to respond to outbreaks between 2021 and 2022. The demand was greater than the sum of the entire previous decade.

For Gavi's managing director for Vaccine Markets and Health Security, Derrick Sim, "the good news is that there are doses to keep up with all the emergency demand, despite the increase in outbreaks".

The WHO had already warned of a gloomy outlook for controlling the disease in the short term.