Plague outbreak kills 60 in Congo -BBC

[Rose Siding]

At least 60 people are thought to have died in an outbreak of plague in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization has said.
It is thought to be the worst outbreak of pneumonic plague, which affects victims' lungs, for 50 years.

The people who have died are all diamond miners. Another 350 miners have been infected.

The WHO is to send an emergency team to the area, in the former Zaire, in a bid to stem the outbreak.
...
Bubonic plague is endemic in parts of Africa, including the DRC, but pneumonic plague, which occurs when the bacteria infects the lung, has a very high fatality rate and is "invariably" deadly when left untreated, the WHO said.

Humans are generally infected with plague by rodents and fleas, but the pneumonic form of the disease can also be transmitted from person to person through respiratory droplets.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4276627.stm

[struggle4progress]

1. WHO Reports 61 Deaths From Rare Plague Type

A rare form of plague has killed at least 61 people at a diamond mine in remote northeastern Congo, and authorities fear that hundreds more who fled into the forest to escape contagion are already infected and dying, the World Health Organization said.

The agency's Dr. Eric Bertherat said the outbreak had been building since December around a mine near Zobia, 170 miles north of Kisangani. Nearly all the 7,000 miners have abandoned the affected area. <snip>

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-fg-briefs19.3feb19,1,6960802.story?coll=la-health-medicine


Plague Hits Miners in Democratic Republic of Congo

The World Health Organization says as many as 400 miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have a highly contagious form of the plague. Health officials are concerned that the miners will leave the area and spread the disease elsewhere in the Central African country.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4504861

[galledgoblin]

2. the PLAGUE?

o_0
who needs to worry about threats like terrorists releasing smallpox or new strands of AIDs when we have good old fashioned medieval diseases killing people?

[rasputin1952]

7. Welcome to DU galledgoblin...

:hi:...:D

[Ilsa]

3. From the CDC website:

Facts about Pneumonic Plague

Plague is an infectious disease that affects animals and humans. It is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This bacterium is found in rodents and their fleas and occurs in many areas of the world, including the United States.

Y. pestis is easily destroyed by sunlight and drying. Even so, when released into air, the bacterium will survive for up to one hour, although this could vary depending on conditions.

Pneumonic plague is one of several forms of plague. Depending on circumstances, these forms may occur separately or in combination:

Pneumonic plague occurs when Y. pestis infects the lungs. This type of plague can spread from person to person through the air. Transmission can take place if someone breathes in aerosolized bacteria, which could happen in a bioterrorist attack. Pneumonic plague is also spread by breathing in Y. pestis suspended in respiratory droplets from a person (or animal) with pneumonic plague. Becoming infected in this way usually requires direct and close contact with the ill person or animal. Pneumonic plague may also occur if a person with bubonic or septicemic plague is untreated and the bacteria spread to the lungs.

Bubonic plague is the most common form of plague. This occurs when an infected flea bites a person or when materials contaminated with Y. pestis enter through a break in a person's skin. Patients develop swollen, tender lymph glands (called buboes) and fever, headache, chills, and weakness. Bubonic plague does not spread from person to person.

Septicemic plague occurs when plague bacteria multiply in the blood. It can be a complication of pneumonic or bubonic plague or it can occur by itself. When it occurs alone, it is caused in the same ways as bubonic plague; however, buboes do not develop. Patients have fever, chills, prostration, abdominal pain, shock, and bleeding into skin and other organs. Septicemic plague does not spread from person to person.

Symptoms and Treatment

With pneumonic plague, the first signs of illness are fever, headache, weakness, and rapidly developing pneumonia with shortness of breath, chest pain, cough, and sometimes bloody or watery sputum. The pneumonia progresses for 2 to 4 days and may cause respiratory failure and shock. Without early treatment, patients may die.

Early treatment of pneumonic plague is essential. To reduce the chance of death, antibiotics must be given within 24 hours of first symptoms. Streptomycin, gentamicin, the tetracyclines, and chloramphenicol are all effective against pneumonic plague.

Antibiotic treatment for 7 days will protect people who have had direct, close contact with infected patients. Wearing a close-fitting surgical mask also protects against infection.

A plague vaccine is not currently available for use in the United States.

[Zynx]

4. So long as you have antibiotics, this is easy to kill

The problem is if you don't. Then its almost always going to kill the patient.

[lala_rawraw]

14. If you don't

Have health insurance that is another problem.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Camus still lives.

<nods head reverently>

[bemildred]

6. Panic spreads as plague grips rural DRC

Geneva - An outbreak of plague in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 61 diamond miners and infected hundreds more, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

Many of the 7 000 miners working in Zobia, north of the city of Kisangani, have fled since the outbreak began two months ago, and could have spread the highly contagious disease, the United Nations agency said.

---

Cases are still occurring in the mine, where conditions are crowded and unsanitary, and 20 workers were admitted to health facilities in Zobia with symptoms on Wednesday, he added.

The diagnosis of plague had been verified through testing, WHO spokesperson Dick Thompson said.

IOL

[rasputin1952]

8. As if Africa didn't have enough problems...

Thank God this can be treated if caught early enough.

[lala_rawraw]

9. Let's see

First they test the polio virus on over a million children = AIDS is born, now Plague.... don't you just love the ethics behind the modern $$?

[NickB79]

12. Huh?

"First they test the polio virus on over a million children = AIDS is born".

That'd be a pretty neat trick, seeing as how HIV/AIDS entered the human population in the 1930's, a couple decades before polio vaccinations began.

[lala_rawraw]

13. Check out

The documentary on Sundance... it is pretty convincing. You mean the existing non human-born virus?

[NickB79]

18. No, I mean actual HIV virus

The use of molecular clock dating has pretty well established that HIV first entered the human population from a primate SIV strain in the 1930's. It is a method used to determine how long ago a virus diverged from it's original strain based on how rapidly it has accumulated mutations in it's genetic material. These studies have pointed to the emergence of HIV in human populations in the 1930's.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june99/aids_2-2.html

"LAURIE GARRETT: I think there's another scientific question that's very exciting to look at because working backwards, creating a sort of backwards family tree, Dr. Betty Korber, Los Alamos, has computed that probably this event, this jump from the chimps to humans, occurred sometime between about 1924 and 1946."

[lala_rawraw]

19. they might

want to talk to the people at Sundance... how did this jump from chimps to humans?

[NickB79]

21. Considering how rapidly the virus mutates

And how widespread SIV and other related viruses are in the animal kingdom, it doesn't seem hard to believe that a random mutation allowed it to jump the species barrier naturally. HIV mutates far more rapidly than influenza, for example. It is one of the most rapidly mutating viruses in the world. Combine that with the bushmeat trade, which puts man in contact with numerous forest species harboring SIV. I've seen many a deer hunter slip and cut himself/herself skinning and gutting a deer, myself included. You skin a freshly killed monkey or ape in the jungles of the Congo that's harboring SIV, cut your hand, and you have a source of possible viral transmission. And the most probable source for the original SIV/HIV strain is more likely a species of monkey, not chimp.

[bleedingheart]

22. The three types of Plague have been around far longer than

any vaccines.

The Egyptians suffered from Plague...

However if you are comfortable with the idea of risking polio...go right on ahead; I have seen the damage it does and it is not pretty.

[kineneb]

10. medieval conditions bred medieval diseases

Medieval studies person here...the plague succeeded in the 14th cent. because of primitive living conditions and bad sanitation. Whenever or where ever these two factors come together, the chances for a major outbreak of contagious disease is greater. Much of the third world and parts of the US fit this description.

California also has an endemic plague problem, but because most of the people who catch it get treatment, it doesn't convert into the pneumonic form. It is all the same bug, it just depends on what part of the body it infects.

"Now Johnny, don't touch that cute little chipmunk."

[kineneb]

11. update- plague may spread due to people fleeing area

Just back from reading Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on-line. Things may be worse for the poor folk there...
In a panic over the illness over 7000 people have left the area around Kisingane (sp?), some of whom probably have been exposed to the plague.

for readers of German: www.faz.net

[rasputin1952]

15. Classic spread of Plague...infected individuals creating the paths

of infection. Rather than enclose the problem and treat it, it spreads uncontrollably into the rest of the world. This will not end soon, nor will end w/o hundreds of thousands infected and dying because of poor management of the process...:(

My heart weeps for Africa, and the rest of the world...:cry:

[True_Blue]

16. Pat Robertson had diamond-mining rights in the Congo.

<snip>

"Operation Blessing, a $66-million-a-year agency, describes its principal goal as "providing short-term relief and development assistance to economically disadvantaged people and victims of disaster throughout the world." Despite that stated mission, charges of fraud and abuse plagued the group in the 1990s.

In 1994, Robertson used his "700 Club" program to raise funds for the charity. Robertson told viewers Opera­tion Blessing was using cargo planes to aid refugees from Rwanda who had fled into the neighboring nation of Zaire (now known as Congo) to escape a violent civil war.

Investigators later discovered that Rob­ertson was using the planes, intended for relief efforts, to haul mining equipment in and out of Zaire for the African Development Corporation (ADC), Rob­ertson's for-profit diamond-mining company. Robertson later said the planes had proved impractical for relief work and insisted he had reimbursed the charity for ADC's use of them.

The Virginian-Pilot newspaper noted that state officials criticized the charity for sloppy bookkeeping and for mixing non-profit and for-profit activities. It also pointed out that Robertson reimbursed Operation Blessing for ADC's use of its airplanes in two stages. Investigators determined that ADC owed Operation Blessing $468,773, and Robertson ultimately gave the group $572,597, although $400,000 of the debt was not paid until two months into the official investigation.

</snip>
http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5489&abbr=cs_

[tblue37]

17. We might well be poised for another plague pandemic in the near future.

On one of my websites I have a relatively short informational article about the fact that we might well be poised for another plague pandemic that would dwarf those of the past. (BTW, did you know the last plague pandemic lasted from about 1850 to 1950?)

"Bubonic Plague: Yesterday's Scourge--and Tomorrow's?"
http://salvoblue.homestead.com/plague.html

Also BTW, in 1999 a plague case resistant to all antibiotics normally used to treat plague was found in a child in Madagascar. Bacteria can pass along drug resistance to other bacteria.

Between the possibility of a superplague and that of an avian flu pandemic, we could be so darned screwed in the near future.

[OKthatsIT]

20. This is not as deadly as they are leading us to believe.

Face masks, hygiene will stop it from spreading. It requires nasal drops or saliva to commute to the next host.