UPDATED: This story has been updated, and the diagnosis remains in doubt. See OCHA: The Ugandan Outbreak By The Numbers
# 5123
After more than a month of speculation by local health officials and the media, we are seeing reports that officials have tentatively identified the outbreak of disease in the northern Ugandan district of Kitgum as pneumonic plague.
Previous blog entries on this outbreak include:
Updating Uganda’s Mystery Outbreak
Uganda: Unidentified Hemorrhagic Outbreak
A link to the Reuters report (h/t Shiloh on FluTrackers):
Pneumonic plague outbreak in Uganda: officials
Tue Dec 7, 2010 10:19am EST
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Pneumonic plague has broken out in northern Uganda, killing 38 people and putting dozens in hospital, a senior health official said Tuesday.
Treyfish, posting on this FluTrackers thread, has another report from the Newvision website.
Mysterious Acholi disease is plague
By Conan Businge
and Chris Ocowun
PLAGUE, a disease that affects rodents but can be spread to humans and other animals by infected fleas, has hit the northern Ugandan district of Kitgum, the health ministry has confirmed.
Although few people are aware of it, plague cases still occur and claim lives every year around the world. Even on rare occasions, in the United States.
In 1975, after completing my paramedic training in Florida, I was offered an ALS (Advance Life Support) ambulance job in Phoenix, Arizona.
On my first day there, I was given an orientation, which included information about threats I hadn't dealt with in my home state of Florida: Scorpion stings, Gila Monster bites, and bubonic plague.
This map, from the CDC, shows areas of the world where plague is endemic, mostly in rodents.
The last major urban outbreak of plague in the United States occurred in 1924-25 in Los Angeles. Since then, only scattered cases have been reported, with about 10-15 cases each year.
Worldwide, on average, anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 cases are reported each year.
Bubonic Plague (Yersinia Pestis) is a bacterial infection transmitted by fleas, carried by infected rats. The infection generally sets up in the lymphatic system, resulting in the tell-tale buboes, or swollen lymph glands in the the groin, armpits, and neck.
In rare cases, however, Pneumonic Plague may develop. Here the infected person develops a severe pneumonia, with coughing and hemoptysis (coughing up of blood), and may spread the disease from human-to-human.
Luckily modern antibiotics are pretty good at treating bubonic plague. Without treatment, however, mortality rates run 40%-60%. Untreated, pneumonic plague is almost always fatal.
In 1994, the last big plague year, 5000 suspected cases of bubonic plague and pneumonic plague occurred in Surat, India, with 100 deaths.
