NO ONE IS SAFE Brits warned as BLACK DEATH plague outbreak intensifies on Madagascar and kills 100 on holiday island
The disease, which contributed to the deaths of more than 50 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, has spread from rural into urban areas which are not usually affected
By Patrick Knox
TheSun.co.uk
22nd October 2017
THE Black Death outbreak on Madagascar is intensifying, with health officials warning “no one is safe” from the deadly plague.
As the death toll spirals to at least 100, the UK Government has warned British tourists to stay clear of plague-hit areas on the holiday island.
Health officials say the disease has now become much more contagious because it is now being transmitted from person-to-person through the air as well as from animals to humans through infected flea bites.
The disease, which contributed to the deaths of more than 50 million people in Europe during the Middle Ages, has spread from rural areas into urban areas which are not usually affected.
While cases of bubonic plague occur in Madagascar nearly every year, this years epidemic is “much more dangerous”, said Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), from Madagascar.
This year, plague arrived earlier than expected, and the infection is also spreading in urban centres and in areas that until now had not been affected, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said this week.
Health officials say the medieval illness is spreading at an “alarming rate”.
Dr Manitra Rakotoarivony, Madagascar’s director of health promotion, said: “Normally, people who catch the plague live in poor areas, but people in every place in society are catching the disease.”
The country reports between 300 and 600 cases of bubonic plague each year — equal to 80 per cent of the world’s total cases.
But experts say the deadlier version of the disease, pneumonic plague, is spreading rapidly into towns.
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