Stopping Cholera at Its Source: How the KRAKEN System Can Help
Cholera is surging worldwide. From January to mid-August 2025, 409,000 cases and 4,700 deaths were reported across 31 countries, with hotspots in Chad, DRC, South Sudan, and Sudan—pushing health systems to the brink.
Conflict, flooding, and displacement are contaminating water sources and limiting access to care. Some regions face fatality rates over 6%, with nearly half of deaths happening before patients reach treatment (WHO, 2025).
WHO warns that without rapid action—better surveillance, faster treatment, and improved WASH—cholera will keep crossing borders.
What if we could catch outbreaks before they spiral?
The Problem: Slow Detection, Rapid Spread
Cholera spreads through water and food contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Often flourishing in flood-affected or densely populated areas where safe water access is limited. Traditional surveillance methods rely on health clinics to report suspected cases, which means outbreaks are often well underway before authorities even know they exist.
This delay is costly—not just in lives, but in resources. By the time response teams arrive, thousands may already be infected, forcing large-scale vaccination campaigns and emergency WASH interventions.
The Solution: Real-Time Water Monitoring with the KRAKEN
The KRAKEN system, developed by Kraken Sense, offers a game-changing approach to cholera prevention. It is a portable, qPCR-powered platform that continuously monitors water systems for pathogens—including Vibrio cholerae and many others.
Here’s how KRAKEN can help stop cholera outbreaks before they start:
1. Early Warning in Water Sources
Cholera begins in contaminated water—exactly where the KRAKEN excels. By testing wastewater, rivers, or drinking water sources in near real time, health officials can detect the presence of Vibrio cholerae before clinical cases appear.
2. Rapid Response for Containment
When a hotspot is detected, authorities can immediately deploy interventions:
Chlorinate water points
Distribute hygiene kits
Open local treatment centers
Alert nearby communities
This proactive approach dramatically reduces the number of infections.
3. Continuous Community Monitoring
KRAKEN isn’t a one-time test—it can continuously sample and analyze water, at any time interval decided by the user. This allows public health teams to track whether interventions are working and respond dynamically as conditions change, such as after flooding or population displacement.
4. Data-Driven Decision Making
Results from each KRAKEN unit are fed into a cloud-based dashboard. This provides governments, NGOs, and international responders with real-time situational awareness across regions, helping them allocate vaccines, treatment supplies, and personnel where they are needed most.
Why This Matters
Stopping cholera transmission requires speed. The faster health officials know where Vibrio cholerae is circulating, the faster they can prevent it from spreading into explosive outbreaks.
With KRAKEN, that’s finally possible. Instead of waiting for cases to be reported from remote health centers, the system acts like a community-level early warning siren—detecting cholera at the water source, sometimes before the first patient ever falls ill.
A Future Without Cholera
The WHO and Africa CDC recently launched a Continental Cholera Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan, aiming to eliminate cholera by 2030. Innovative tools like KRAKEN can help make this goal a reality by bridging the critical gap between environmental surveillance and rapid intervention.
By empowering communities and health systems with timely, actionable data, the KRAKEN system can be a cornerstone of cholera control—saving lives, protecting vulnerable populations, and helping countries finally break the cycle of outbreak after outbreak.
