Deadly outbreak strikes Madagascar

The bubonic plague has spread through Madagascar, with authorities warning the deadly disease could spread to neighbouring nations.

The plague has killed more than 100 people and infected more than 1,000 in Madagascar in the last two months with fears it could continue to spread through the region and abroad via flights taken by people in the region.

A family tradition known as turning the bones is thought to have contributed to the spread of the disease in the country.

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The tradition, called famadihana, involves families exhuming their deceased relatives’ bodies every five, seven and nine years, dancing with them through the streets and then rewrapping them in fresh cloth before returning them to their graves.

“If a person dies of pneumonic plague and is then interred in a tomb that is subsequently opened for a famadihana, the bacteria can still be transmitted and contaminate whoever handles the body,” Willy Randriamarotia, the chief of staff in Madagascar’s health ministry, told AFP. 

The plague caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria is endemic to Madagascar and the bubonic plague spread through Europe in the 1300s, killing an estimated 25 million people.

Dr Ashok Chopra, a professor of microbiology and immunology from the University of Texas, told The Sun that we have yet to see the real damage the infection could do.

“If they are travelling shorter distances and they’re still in the incubation period, and they have the pneumonic (form) then they could spread it to other places,” he said.

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“We don’t want to have a situation where the disease spreads so fast it sort of gets out of control.

“Most of the cases in the past have been of the bubonic plague but if you look at this particular outbreak, 70 percent of the cases are pneumonic plague, which is the most deadly form of the disease.”

Symptoms of pneumonic plague include chest pains, coughing, fever, headache and can kill an infected person within just 12 to 24 hours.

Close to 70 per cent of cases of the plague in Madagascar are reportedly pneumonic, with 400 estimated cases reported in the country each year.