CONGO PLAGUE
February 1st, 2005
BY KEITH NUTHALLTHE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) has reported the deaths of 61 diamond miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from pneumonic plague, which ravaged Middle Ages Europe as 'the Black Death'. Today 98.7% of the three types of plague cases are found in Africa: worldwide, in 2003, nine countries reported 2,118 cases and 182 deaths, also in the ex-USSR, the Americas and Asia. Pneumonic is the rarest strain, with around 2% of cases, compared with bubonic and septicaemic plague. It is the deadliest, transmitted human-to-human by breath droplets ...
Full access to this article can be arranged with permission from the client that first ordered it. Please contact us to request access. Entries are uploaded to our archive at least one year after being published by a client – free access is restricted to International News Services journalists for background research only. The article date indicates when copy was filed to a client, not when posted to this archive. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.