Plague on Madagascar demands 60 deaths

The plague on Madagascar is causing 60 deaths and 200 people have become infected

31/03/2011

In Madagascar rages the plague (Latin Pestis = plague). According to official figures, 60 people have already died of plague in the south-east African island state since the beginning of the year. Cases of extremely contagious infectious disease have been reported from almost every region of Madagascar, health authorities say.

Hundreds of Madagascan residents suffer from the plague. Health authorities have been extremely worried not only because of the rapid spread of the infectious disease, but also because some strains of pathogens have already developed extensive resistance to antibiotics. „If these strains spread further, it will cause serious public health problems“, warned the painter Elisabeth Carniel from Paris „Institut Pasteur“ in a report by the TV station „ZDF“.

Antibiotic-resistant pests?
The spread of the plague is also problematic, according to local medical experts, because the treatment options are not designed for such rapid spread of the disease. „We are very worried“, emphasized Bruno Maes from the UN Children's Fund UNICEF in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. The ignorance of the population in dealing with the dangerous infectious disease is another problem according to the expert. For example, the infected people would come „for fear of not being able to pay the medication“ often too late to the doctor. But the preparations are basically free, explained Bruno Maes. According to the health authorities, around 200 people in Madagascar are currently infected with pest, and 60 people have already died of plague since the beginning of the year. Normally, a pest disease with antibiotics can be successfully treated without any problems. However, in the case of the strains occurring in Madagascar, in some cases multiple resistant bacteria were detected. According to French breast cancer expert Elisabeth Carniel, the most dangerous stem strain is already immune to eight of the antibiotics recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). If these resistant pest organisms spread, threatening epidemics to a long forgotten extent.

Pest also not defeated in industrialized countries
Although the plague has long been a thing of the past in Europe, the plague is not nearly defeated anywhere in the world. Again and again it comes to outbreaks of the plague, especially in regions where people and rats live together in a small space. Because the plague is transmitted primarily by the bite of rat fleas on humans. In most cases, poorer regions are more affected, as the rats live here in the immediate vicinity of the people or - as is currently the case in Madagascar - flee to the villages and towns during the rainy season or during regular floods. But even modern industrialized nations are not protected from the outbreak of the plague. For example, in the southwestern states of the United States, plague diseases occur again and again, with about ten to twenty people contracting the highly infectious infectious disease each year. Recently, an outbreak of the plague was also reported from China. Overall, the plague outbreaks of the last ten years, however, were mostly affected by African countries.

Health care in Madagascar Pestausbruch not equaled
Madagascar was last plagued by the plague in 2009, when 18 people died as a result of an outbreak of the disease. The disease in the world's second largest island nation has now broken out again, according to experts, also due to the constant erosion of health care in Madagascar. In the course of the coup attempts and government reversals of recent years, the situation for the inhabitants has worsened drastically and it remains doubtful whether since the end of March 2009 ruling, democratically not legitimized, transitional government of the current plague spread can be mastered by their own efforts. In the island state come according to the „Human Development Report 2009: Madagascar“ Only 100 physicians have 29 physicians, and government spending on healthcare is less than $ 30 per capita per year. According to United Nations data, less than half of the population has access to clean drinking water, and more than 70,000 children die every year before the age of five from preventable diseases such as diarrhea, airway inflammation or malaria.

Threatens the return of the plague?
The fact that in Madagascar apparently antibiotic-resistant Pesterre are in circulation is, according to the experts, a hardly underestimating threat to public health. To recall the devastating magnitude of the epidemic, if antibiotic treatment is not possible, we should remember the medieval Europe. Here, in its heyday, the plague attracted nearly half the population and shaped society like no other disease. Although due to the improved hygiene situation, a comparable catastrophic epidemic is unlikely today, despite possibly resistant pathogens, but in Madagascar especially in the current rainy season, rats and humans coexist in a confined space, so that the transmission of the pests by the rat fleas is favored. If even the common antibiotics fail, a dramatic spread of the plague threatens. (Fp)

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Image: Gerd Altmann, Pixelio.de