Cholera pandemics are fueled by globe-trotting bacterial strains

Insight into how the bug spreads could help stop it

Haiti in 2010

TREAT, STAT  Rapid treatment to replenish fluids is crucial for cholera patients, like this young girl being taken to a health center in Haiti during the 2010 epidemic.

Guillermo Arias/Associated Press

Cholera strains behind worldwide outbreaks of the deadly disease over the last five decades are jet-setters rather than homebodies.