Jun 18 2006
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as many as a hundred people have died in a suspected outbreak of pneumonic plague in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nineteen of the deaths were in the northeast Ituri district, an area known to be the most active area of human plague in the world with some 1,000 cases each year.
The WHO says some cases of bubonic plague have also been reported, but as yet there are no figures.
The outbreak began there in mid-May; both strains of the plague are spread mostly by fleas, causing an infection in the lungs which slowly suffocates the victim.
If treated promptly with antibiotics, survival is usually assured, but when left untreated, the pneumonic strain which can also be spread from human to human via respiratory droplets, has a very high fatality rate.
A team of specialists from the WHO, the Medecins sans Frontiers and the Congolese Ministry of Health are reportedly in the area assessing the situation, and isolation wards have been set up to treat patients.
But control measures are apparently difficult to implement because of continuing security problems in the war ravaged Central African country.