Bubonic plague in Madagascar

Alongside Ebola in West Africa, another African country, Madagascar, is also dealing with an infectious disease outbreak, in this case the bubonic plague.

http://news.discovery.com/human/health/ ... 141125.htm

Like West Africa, there's a perfect storm of conditions coming together to spread this disease. Dense populations, poor health infrastructure, slum neighborhoods that harbor infected rodents, and the fleas that carry the bacteria from rodent to human have grown resistant to a lot of pesticides. The disease is easily treated early with antibiotics, but there's not much infrastructre to effectively deliver it. Plus there's always the potential for the bacteria to become resistant.

The bubonic plague is common in the west/ southwest United States. Unlike Polio or Smallpox, its not quite eradicated. (But neither are Polio or Smallpox, technically.)
its more limited to animals, however humans can very much catch it as it is unfortunately doing now.

Its treatable. However around the world, there were prior cases that were resistant to antibiotics, which were indeed found in Madagaskar in the past. Quite unfortunate.

http://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html

Sad to hear this is striking again. It seems like it is always going to be something. I remember these past few years around the world people have dealt with AIDS, ebola, bird flu, West Nile Virus and some other type of plague or sickness, although some of them are more deadly and serious than others. I have read that the antibiotics and other medicines that people take to prevent so many of these diseases and other sicknesses are not working as good as they used to as our bodies have become more accustomed to them, etc. Scary in the world today for so many reasons.

Silver_Surfer1 wrote:

Sad to hear this is striking again. It seems like it is always going to be something. I remember these past few years around the world people have dealt with AIDS, ebola, bird flu, West Nile Virus and some other type of plague or sickness, although some of them are more deadly and serious than others. I have read that the antibiotics and other medicines that people take to prevent so many of these diseases and other sicknesses are not working as good as they used to as our bodies have become more accustomed to them, etc. Scary in the world today for so many reasons.

Humanity will basically never get rid of infectious disease. And honestly, going into the future, it may get worse in some ways. Not just because of antibiotic resistance (which is the bacteria getting accustomed to antibiotics and evolving resistance to them, not us) but because climate change is likely to help disease vectors, like mosquitos, spread into new areas and they'll take their diseases with them. Medicine is beginning to enter a post-antibiotic era because once we had antibiotics, we weren't so great about using them properly and it's coming back to bite us.

Hint to all: if you have a viral illness, don't ask for antibiotics from your doctor. They don't help against viruses at all. Overuse (like in agriculture) and misuse of antibiotics (like using them for a viral illness) are the major causes of antibiotic resistance.

Yes Wolfbird is correct.
Its the bacteria and virii that become resistant to the antibiotics, not us humans.
Even worse, with the global climate change and the apparent no shortage of vectors, the virus especially can use creatures such as mosquitoes as vectors, but can also use bacteria as vectors--or even worse, use bacteria as plasmid factories to manufacture antibiotic resistant proteins which the virus then uses.
So imagine a rat is infected with bacteria x from a mosquito, which is bad itself, but bacteria x is being used to make microscopic proteins that have the gene for virus resistance to antibiotics for virus xx.
With our globalized world, mosquitos and flies are among the most common transient, transporters of disease from continent.

Scary stuff.
Next time you have a chest cold, say "no" to antibiotics.
But at the same time, please stay upto date with immunizations. They exist for a reason.

The problem with so called "third world"countries and economies, is the lack of resources for public health and healthcare in general. Which is, unfortunate.