The strain that’s killed 124 people on the Indian Ocean island states and infected hundreds more is actually three plagues in one.

The World Health Organization South Africans are at risk because of trade and travel links with Madagascar.

Plague is endemic in Madagascar with annual outbreaks caused by rats fleeing forest fires.

This year though the bubonic plague strain carried by these rats and fleas on them is accompanied by much deadlier pneumonic plague which is spread between humans by saliva droplets

There is also septecaemic plague, a deadly blood infection.

Immediate treatment with antibiotics, that didn’t exist in the 1300s, is highly effective.

Left untreated, the plague is almost 100 percent lethal.

The post Madagascar’s plage dealer than the 14th century black death appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.

It’s particularly dangerous because most of the cases are of the airborne pneumonic variety.

One case has been confirmed in neighboring Seychelles.

Last Tuesday, doctors in Antananarivo were battling 320 cases of the  plague.

Today, there are 805 cases and the death toll is 74.

The World Health  Organization has shipped 1,2 million doses of the antibiotic that cures the plague.

If left untreated, its lethal.

Plague is endemic in Madagascar. But it’s generally of the bubonic kind – spread by rats and fleas.

Pneumonic plague, spread by saliva droplets coughed by victims,  is more  dangerous particularly in crowded living areas like the capital and the large port town of Toamasina.

The post Plague cases in Madagascar more than double in a week appeared first on Jean-Jacques Cornish.