| Year/Period | Event type | Event | Present-day geographic location |
|---|
| 460–377 BCE | Discovery | First mention of cholera by Hippocrates [2] | Greece |
| 1563 | Crisis | First record of the disease in a medical report[3] | India |
| 1817–1824 | Crisis | First pandemic begins near Calcutta, reaching most of Asia. It is thought to have killed over 100,000 people.[4][5] | India, Thailand, Philippines, Java, Oman, China, Japan, Persian Gulf, Iraq, Syria, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Transcaucasia, Astrakhan (Russia), Zanzibar, and Mauritius. |
| 1829–1851 | Crisis | Second pandemic known as the Asiatic Cholera Pandemic arguably starts along the Ganges river. It is the first to reach Europe and North America. Like in the first one, fatalities reach six figures [4][5] | India, western and eastern Asia, Europe, Americas.[5] |
| 1851–1938 | Organization | The International Sanitary Conferences, largely inspired by the cholera pandemics, are held with the objective to standardize international quarantine regulations against the spread of cholera and other diseases[6] | Paris, Constantinople, Vienna, Washington, Rome, Venice, Dresden |
| 1832 | Breakthrough | Medical pioneer Thomas Latta develops the first intravenous saline drip[7] | Scotland (Leith) |
| 1852–1860 | Crisis | Third pandemic starts along the Ganges delta. Millions of infected in Russia. Death toll reaches one million.[4][5] | Asia, Europe, Africa and North America |
| 1854 | Scientific advance | Italian anatomist Filippo Pacini isolates the cholera bacterium for the first time.[8] | Italy |
| 1854 | Crisis | 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak kills at least 500[9] | England (London) |
| 1863–1875 | Discovery | First demonstration by John Snow, during an epidemic in London, that the transmission of cholera is significantly reduced when uncontaminated water is provided to the population [3] | England |
| 1863–1875 | Crisis | The fourth pandemic starts again in the Ganges delta.[5] | Asia, Middle East, Russia, Europe, Africa and North America |
| 1879 | Breakthrough | Louis Pasteur succeeds in immuniziting chicken from cholera[10] | France |
| 1881–1896 | Crisis | Fifth pandemic, starting in India. The first to reach South America [5] | Asia, Africa, Russia, Europe, South America |
|
| 1883 | Discovery | Identification of virus V. cholerae by Robert Koch during an outbreak[11] | Egypt |
| 1885 | Breakthrough | Spanish physician Jaume Ferran i Clua develops a cholera inoculation, the first to immunize humans against a bacterial disease.[12] | |
| 1892 | Breakthrough | Russian bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine develops the first cholera vaccine. [13] | |
| 1899–1923 | Crisis | The sixth pandemic kills more than 800,000 people in India where it begins[5] | India, Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. |
| 1948 | Organization | Formation of the World Health Organization (WHO) [6] | Geneva |
| 1961–present | Crisis | The seventh pandemic, starting in Indonesia, continues today at a much smaller scale [5] | Asia, Africa, Americas, Europe, Oceania |
| 2007 | Breakthrough | Researchers from the University of Tokyo develop a type of rice that carries the cholera vaccine.[14] | Japan |
| 2008 | Crisis | Zimbabwean cholera outbreak. 98,741 cases and 4,293 deaths reported[15][16] | Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia. |
| 2010–present | Crisis | Outbreak in Haiti kills over 9,500 people across four countries[17] | Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Florida (U.S.) |
| 2014–2015 | Crisis | Outbreak in Africa. 1,475 reported deaths,[18] 84,675 reported cases[18] | Ghana, Nigeria, Niger, Togo, Benin, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Chad, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea |
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