Three cases of bubonic plague confirmed

Three people have contracted bubonic plague in the western Kazakh province of Mangistauskaya, while 135 others are under observation in Aktau, a port city on the Caspian, according to Kazakh health officials. "The situation is that there are three patients with confirmed diagnosis of the bubonic plague," Albert Askarov, the head of the epidemiological inspection department at the health ministry, told IRIN from the capital, Astana, on Friday. He said the other 135, who were believed to have been in contact with meat from an infected camel, had been hospitalised and isolated for observation for the disease's six-day incubation period. "Their health condition is normal. They don't have any clinical symptoms, and when it will have been six days since their hospitalisation, they will be immediately discharged from hospital," Askarov said, adding that those patients having plague would be treated until they were completely cured. "The outbreak has been localised, and we do hope that the number will be limited to these three patients," he said, noting that all possible preventive measures were being taken. He stressed that the outbreak posed no serious threat to the population of Mangistauskaya. One of the oldest identifiable diseases known to man, plague remains endemic in many parts of the world. It is still widely distributed in the tropics and subtropics and in warmer areas of temperate countries. Essentially a disease of wild rodents, plague is spread from one rodent to another by fleas, and to humans either by the bite of infected fleas or when handling infected hosts. Recent outbreaks have shown that plague may reoccur in areas that have long remained free of the deadly disease. Untreated, mortality - particularly from pneumonic plague - may reach high levels. When rapidly diagnosed and promptly treated, plague may be successfully managed with antibiotics such as streptomycin and tetracycline, reducing mortality from 60 percent to less than 15 percent. Bubonic plague wiped out around one-third of Europe's population during a massive outbreak in the 14th century.