Seven reasons we don’t need to panic about the plague in SA
The World Health Organisation on Thursday reported that SA is on the watch list for plague‚ as there is travel between SA and Madagascar. TimesLIVE spoke to Prof Lucille Blumberg‚ consultant at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD)‚ about the facts of the plague. 1. Calm down and don’t call it the Black Death: Scientists don’t call even call the disease the Black Plague anymore. "It is just called the plague." Blumberg explained that the "black plague" and the words "black death" refer to the disease in the Middle Ages‚ when it killed millions of people in Europe. But 1346 was before the age of antibiotics. In the 14th century‚ people’s fingers and toes may have gone black due to the infection in their blood. Today plague is a treatable disease with commonly used antibiotics. 2. The disease has not spread across borders in three months: the plague has been in Madagascar since August‚ where there have been 124 deaths‚ and not one case has spread to any neighbouring ...
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