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As I write this, it is just four hours ago (on 2 August 2009) that the news agency Bloomberg reported that an entire village in China has been quarantined, after one man died and 11 others fell ill from the bubonic plague. And on August 3, the news came that a second man -- the neighbour of the first -- has died.
This is not to alarm you -- although I did feel alarmed when I first received the news, from a friend via sms, about an hour ago.
As I did more research on this fearsome disease, I realised that the latest China outbreak is not the only recent appearance of the "Black Death plague". And so far, those other appearances have not been serious. There have been no epidemics, or pandemics, of the disease in recent times.
It is just that, before the current outbreak of H1N1 flu, news about diesases like the bubonic plague do not attract much attention. Suddenly, it has become newsworthy enough for a friend to inform me via sms the moment he heard about it on the BBC Radio News.
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Since the Black Death, there had been abour 12 major waves of "plagues" affecting various parts of the world. Most were due to the bubonic and hemorrhagic plagues, but some other outbreaks due to cholera, smallpox and other diseases are also called "plagues". The most recent was the Third Pandemic, which refers to a bubonic plague that began in Yunnan, China in the 1850s and spread worldwide, remaining active until 1959. This plague killed over 12 million people in China and India alone. Although the number of deaths was fewer than that of the Black Death plague, the Third Pandemic was severe for a different reason -- it lasted over a hundred years and continued into the era of improved sanitation and modern medicine. |
There are valid reasons to be concerned. For while the H1N1 flu has so far proved to be mild, the bubonic plague has always been deadly. If patients are untreated, about half of them would die within three to seven days.
It can also lead to more serious illnesses, including pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs, and septicemic plague, which results in blood poisoning. These two other forms of the plague can kill a patient in just one day. These are said to be the deadliest of all infectious diseases.
As you can see from the different names, bubonic is just one of several different types of plagues, even though "the plague" commonly refers to the bubonic plague. The name "bunonic" stems from the fact that this disease causes swollen lumps called "buboes" in the armpits, groin or neck.
The disease is linked to the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which enters the body through the skin -- usually via a flea bite -- and spreads through the lymphatic system. The more deadly pneumonic plague, however, can spread through the air by coughing, or through contact with contaminated articles. So there is a possibility of it becoming a deadly epidemic or even a pandemic.
This brings us to the biggest piece of bad news... During the Black Death that swept across Europe from 1348 to 1350, the bubonic plague really killed lots of pepple. The current news reports state, as background information, that about 25 million people died. Other sources put the figure at between 100 million and 200 million. The Black Death plague is said to have wiped out between 30 percent and 60 percent of Europe's population at that time!
The good news...
The good news is that the latest outbreak occurs in a very remote part of China -- in a town called Ziketan, north east of Tibet. The Chinese authorities seem to have acted swiftly. The World Health Organisation was alerted and the area has been quarantined. For now, the disease seems to have been contained and the chances of it spreading are, well, remote.
Meanwhile, other recent appearances of the disease also did not develop into serious outbreaks. These include:
These cases affected only individuals or small groups of people. They assure us that the mere appearance of an infectious disease, even in a big city and highly-populated city like Los Angeles, will not necessarily lead to a widespread epidemic or pandemic.
Meanwhile, another piece of "good news" coming from the medical establishment is that the bubonic plague is easily treatable with antibiotics. I am not counting on this. Once enough cases appear, and enough victims take antibiotics, we can quite certainly expect new, antibiotic-resistant strains of the Yersinia pestis bacterium to appear.
Then we will be in big trouble.
For now, there is no need to worry. Let's just monitor the situations in Libya and China, and hope that the bubonic plague outbreaks there remain isolated.