Plagues
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Question

Mystery illness strikes scores of French pupils

Joshua Melvin
The Local, France
Thu, 10 Apr 2014 21:57 UTC
Mystery illness
© Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFPA mystery illness has struck hundreds of pupils at a French school.
Hundreds of French school children have fallen victim to a mystery sickness that has spread like wildfire through their school. All classes have been suspended and baffled health authorities have advised the school to close, while they try to determine the cause of the outbreak.

Since January at least 227 pupils at their school in south-western France have reported headaches, dizziness, vertigo and trouble breathing, but health authorities, despite carrying out multiple tests, are no closer to determining the cause.

Earlier this week regional health authorities in Aquitaine recommended "as a measure of precaution" closing part of the College Jean-Moulin in Artix, French magazine L'Express reported.

The school apparently remains open for the moment, but all classes have been suspended.

So far the most promising lead was the series of renovations completed at the secondary (junior high) school over the winter holidays. It was shortly after classes resumed in January that pupils began reporting symptoms.

The head of the Aquitaine regional health authority told L'Express they were baffled by the outbreak of sickness.
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Bacon

Pork prices rise after virus kills piglets


Associated Press
Tue, 08 Apr 2014 14:45 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, FileDr. Craig Rowles stands with hogs in one of his Carroll, Iowa, hog buildings.
A virus never before seen in the U.S. has killed millions of baby pigs in less than a year, and with little known about how it spreads or how to stop it, it's threatening pork production and pushing up prices by 10 percent or more.

Estimates vary, but one economist believes case data indicate more than 6 million piglets in 27 states have died since porcine epidemic diarrhea showed up in the U.S. last May. A more conservative estimate from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows the nation's pig herd has shrunk at least 3 percent to about 63 million pigs since the disease appeared.

Scientists think the virus, which does not infect humans or other animals, came from China, but they don't know how it got into the country. The federal government is looking into how such viruses might spread, while the pork industry, wary of future outbreaks, has committed $1.7 million to research the disease.
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Health

West African countries mobilizes against Ebola, hemorrhagic fevers


Press TV
Sat, 05 Apr 2014 03:21 UTC
Ebola virus in Guinea
© UnknownHealth workers bury the body of a person killed by viral hemorrhagic fever at a center for victims of the Ebola virus in Guinea, on April 1, 2014.
West African countries have mobilized against an epidemic of hemorrhagic fevers including Ebola, which has claimed dozens of lives in the region.

Guinea is the worst affected country with 86 deaths, 45 of them confirmed as Ebola.

Guinea's neighbors have sent health teams to border territories and introduced measures to prevent the spread of Ebola.

Tarik Jasarevic, spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Friday that the UN agency is trying to track people who had encountered the victims.

"What is really important is to inform the population of Guinea and Conakry about this disease, as this is the first time they are facing Ebola. They need to know what it is and how they can protect themselves," Jasarevic said.

Mali became the latest of Guinea's neighbors to announce suspected cases of Ebola, saying three victims had been placed in isolation.

Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders has warned that the Ebola outbreak in Guinea is an "unprecedented epidemic" that is dangerously widespread across Guinea.

The disease is highly contagious and leads to external and internal bleeding.

Ebola is one of the most contagious viral diseases often resulting in death. The virus cannot be prevented with a vaccine and is untreatable with medication.

The deadly viral infection, which is spread by close contact, was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo -- then known as Zaire -- in 1976. There is no vaccine or specific treatment for Ebola and the disease kills up to 90 percent of its victims who suffer extensive internal and external bleeding.
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Attention

Republic of Mali: Possible cases of Ebola identified

Adama Diarra and Misha Hussain
Yahoo! News
Fri, 04 Apr 2014 09:14 UTC
Image
© Press TVMembers of Doctors without Borders medical aid agency carry the body of a person killed by viral haemorrhagic fever at a center for victims of the Ebola virus in Guekedou, Guinea, April 1, 2014.
Mali said it had identified its first possible cases of Ebola since the start of an outbreak in neighbouring Guinea, adding to fears that the deadly virus was spreading across West Africa.

More than 90 people have already died in Guinea and Liberia in what medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned could turn into an unprecedented epidemic in an impoverished region with poor health services.

Foreign mining companies have locked down operations and pulled out some international staff in mineral-rich Guinea. French health authorities have also put doctors and hospitals on alert in case people travelling to and from former colonies in the region pick up the disease.

Three people in Mali had been placed in quarantine and samples sent off to Atlanta in the United States for tests, the government said on state television late on Thursday.
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Pills

Rare skin infection spreads in New York City; 66 cases reported


CBS News - New York
Thu, 03 Apr 2014 12:00 UTC
Image
© AP/Health DepartmentAt inset, what the infection looks like
The number of New Yorkers suspected of having a rare skin infection that comes from handling raw seafood, causing skin lesions, pain and swelling to the hands and arms and even difficulty moving fingers, has more than doubled, officials said Wednesday.

The department said the number of reported cases has surged to 66, up from 30 last month.

Health officials are warning those who purchase raw fish and seafood at Chinatowns in Manhattan, Queens or Brooklyn to wear waterproof gloves when handling those items, and to seek medical care if they discover red bumps on hands or arms.
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Roses

Ebola outbreak kills 83 in Guinea; spread unprecedented

Simeon Bennett and Ougna Camara
Bloomberg News
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 20:37 UTC
Image
© Cellou Binani/AFP via Getty ImagesTwo members of the Guinean Red Cross, in protective gear, arrive on March 31, 2014 to evacuate the bodies of two people who died from the Ebola virus in an isolation ward at the Donka hospital in Conakry, Guinea.
The death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in seven years climbed to 83 in Guinea as the aid organization Doctors Without Borders said the disease's geographical spread marks the flare-up as unprecedented.

In neighboring Liberia, one of two confirmed cases has died, while a second person who died with a suspected Ebola infection tested negative for the virus, the World Health Organization said in a statement. Both confirmed cases in Liberia were exposed to Ebola in Guinea, Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, said on Twitter.

The outbreak is the first in Guinea, which reported five new cases, raising the total to 127 suspected or confirmed illnesses, Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman in Guinea, said today. The pattern of infection, with patients found in the coastal capital of Conakry as well as villages in the country's southern area, marks this outbreak as different, according to Mariano Lugli of Doctors Without Borders.
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Health

Morocco steps up guard after Ebola outbreak in Guinea


Yahoo
Tue, 01 Apr 2014 12:34 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo/SeyllouHealth specialists work in an isolation ward for patients at the Doctors Without Borders facility in Guékedou, southern Guinea
Morocco announced extra health screening measures Tuesday at entry points to the country, in particular at Casablanca airport, after the outbreak of the deadly Ebola epidemic in Guinea.

"As a precautionary measure," the health ministry has stepped up "sanitary checks at entry points ... especially at Casablanca airport," a key transportation hub for north and west Africa, the official MAP news agency reported.

Travellers from countries with recorded cases of Ebola will undergo medical tests for signs of haemorrhagic fever, the ministry said in a statement carried by MAP.
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Health

UK infectious disease expert: Thousands of lives put at risk by clinical trials system

Ian Sample
The Guardian
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 13:34 UTC
Image
© Healthmaven.com
A major outbreak of infectious disease could sweep through the country and leave thousands dead or ill because hospitals cannot test life-saving treatments quickly enough, senior doctors have told the Guardian.

Profound delays in the approvals process for clinical trials mean doctors face months of form-filling and administrative checks that make it impossible to run crucial tests in good time, said Jeremy Farrar, in his first major interview as director of the Wellcome Trust.

Farrar, a world expert on infectious diseases at Oxford University, has taken over from Sir Mark Walport, who left the medical charity to become the government's chief science adviser.

Farrar's warning is backed by other senior figures including Sir Michael Rawlins, president of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Prof Peter Openshaw, who advised the government during the pandemic flu outbreak in 2009.

Farrar said the unwieldy system puts public health at risk, particularly when pandemic flu and other infectious diseases strike, because doctors have no idea which interventions work.
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Attention

Ebola outbreak in Guinea spreads to Liberia, Sierra Leone

Katie Moisse
abc News
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 05:58 UTC
ebola
© Youssouf Bah/Associated PressThe outbreak has sickened at least 112 people, according to WHO
An Ebola outbreak in Guinea that has killed 78 people has crossed borders into Liberia and Sierra Leona, health officials said.

A total of four people in Liberia and Sierra Leone are thought to have contracted the Ebolavirus while traveling to Guinea, according to the World Health Organization. At least three of them have died.

Senegal has closed its border crossings with Guinea until further notice, The Associated Press reported.

Two health care workers are among the 112 suspected cases in the growing outbreak, "indicating the need to further strengthen health facility-based infection prevention and control," WHO said in a statement.
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Fireball

Rats and fleas myth laid to rest as researchers conclude Black Death plague was spread by air-borne pathogens

Vanessa Thorpe
The Observer
Sat, 29 Mar 2014 10:54 UTC
plague black death
© Philip Toscano/Press AssociationBlack death researchers extracted plague DNA from 14th century skulls found in east London.
Evidence from skulls in east London shows plague had to have been airborne to spread so quickly

Archaeologists and forensic scientists who have examined 25 skeletons unearthed in the Clerkenwell area of London a year ago believe they have uncovered the truth about the nature of the Black Death that ravaged Britain and Europe in the mid-14th century.

Analysis of the bodies and of wills registered in London at the time has cast doubt on "facts" that every schoolchild has learned for decades: that the epidemic was caused by a highly contagious strain spread by the fleas on rats.

Now evidence taken from the human remains found in Charterhouse Square, to the north of the City of London, during excavations carried out as part of the construction of the Crossrail train line, have suggested a different cause: only an airborne infection could have spread so fast and killed so quickly.

The Black Death arrived in Britain from central Asia in the autumn of 1348 and by late spring the following year it had killed six out of every 10 people in London. Such a rate of destruction would kill five million now. By extracting the DNA of the disease bacterium, Yersinia pestis, from the largest teeth in some of the skulls retrieved from the square, the scientists were able to compare the strain of bubonic plague preserved there with that which was recently responsible for killing 60 people in Madagascar. To their surprise, the 14th-century strain, the cause of the most lethal catastrophe in recorded history, was no more virulent than today's disease. The DNA codes were an almost perfect match.

Comment: What is not being considered is that outbreaks were recorded almost simultaneously in many parts of Europe. "Air-borne" spread of the plague may have come from cosmic events.

The comet of the black death: Comet Negra, 1347
New Light on the Black Death: The Cosmic Connection

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