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.

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