The Challenges of Law and Ethics in the Time of Cholera: Toward a Decolonial Approach to Implementing Medical Technologies in Precarious and Low-Resource Contexts

Infectious diseases such as cholera remain pressing global health challenges that are deeply entangled with poverty, increasing climate change, and fragile health infrastructures. While their epidemiology and treatment are well studied, less attention has been paid to the ethical-legal questions that arise when novel medical technologies are introduced in low-resource settings. This article uses a case study on the use of water testing technologies in Nigeria to demonstrate how such gaps generate not only individual but also collective risks, including effects of stigmatisation, ambiguity of responsibility and dynamics of technological dependency. Considering these critical issues, a new regulatory framework is needed to overcome the limitations of conventional regulatory approaches. It proposes a decolonial approach that integrates international standards, human rights and a greater focus on power dynamics and meaningful and locally grounded participatory approaches in the democratisation of medical technologies.