A plague epidemic has killed 94 people on the island of Madagascar and could spread further, Reuters Africa reports the World Health Organisation said. WHO’s Africa emergencies director, Ibrahima Soce Fall, said the organisation was racing to stop both the Madagascar plague and an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in Uganda that it was confident it could contain.
Plague is endemic in Madagascar, but the outbreak that has caused 1,153 suspected cases since August is especially worrying because it started earlier in the season than usual, it has hit towns rather than rural areas, and it is mainly causing pneumonic plague, the most deadly form of the disease.
The outbreak already looks big when compared with the 3,248 cases and 584 deaths reported worldwide from 2010 to 2015. Fall said the risk to Madagascar remained very high, although the international risk was very low. WHO has delivered antibiotics to Madagascar to treat up to 5,000 patients and as a prophylactic dose for up to 100,000 people who might be at risk, as well as 150,000 sets of personal protective equipment.
The report says about 2,000 health-workers are tracing people who have had contact with plague sufferers, which should allow the disease to be controlled relatively quickly, Fall said. “I‘m confident that with the strong team we have on the ground, combined with more partners coming and health workers, we will be able very quickly to reverse the trend.”
The report says in Uganda, WHO hopes to halt an outbreak of Marburg, a highly infectious haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, which killed a 50-year-old woman three weeks after her brother died of similar symptoms. “The positive thing is that Uganda is very used to managing this kind of outbreak,” Fall said. In the past decade, Uganda has already had four outbreaks of Marburg. An outbreak can kill up to 90% of the people who catch the disease.
The report says several hundred people may have been exposed to the virus at health facilities and at a traditional burial of the dead woman’s brother, who worked as a game hunter and lived near a cave inhabited by Rousettus bats, natural hosts of the Marburg virus.
One suspected case and one probable case are being investigated. “The teams have already investigated the area, identified potential contacts and monitoring these contacts. We are getting daily updates from the team, we are confident that… we will be able to contain it very quickly,” Fall said.
Plague has been ruled out in the Seychelles following lab results from 10 patients, including one earlier deemed a “probable” case, the WHO said in a Reuters Africa report. The UN health body initially raised the alarm after initial tests on a 34-year-old man who had arrived from Madagascar. A confirmed case would have marked the first recorded appearance of the disease on the Indian Ocean island chain. But all 10 samples have now tested negative for plague at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, the WHO said.
“We are working with health authorities to reduce the risk of the spread of plague in the Seychelles by improving surveillance and preparedness,” Fall said.
Plague, which is mainly spread by flea-carrying rats, is endemic in Madagascar where 805 cases have been reported since late August, including 74 deaths, the Madagascar health ministry said. Nearly 600 of the reported cases in Madagascar were the pneumonic form, which is spread human-to-human and is more dangerous than bubonic plague spread by fleas, it said.
The pneumonic form invades the lungs, and is treatable with antibiotics. If not treated, it is always fatal and can kill a person within 24 hours.
[link url="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN1CP1FG-OZATP"]Reuters Africa report[/link]
[link url="https://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKBN1CN22J-OZATP"]Reuters Africa report[/link]