GENEVA: A plague epidemic has killed 94 people on the island of Madagascar and could spread further, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.
WHO’s Africa Emergencies Director Ibrahima Soce Fall told reporters in Geneva the organization was racing to stop both the Madagascar plague and an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in Uganda that it was confident it could contain.
Plague is endemic in Madagascar, but the outbreak that has caused 1,153 suspected cases since August is especially worrying because it started earlier in the season than usual, it has hit towns rather than rural areas, and it is mainly causing pneumonic plague, the most deadly form of the disease.
The outbreak already looks big when compared with the 3,248 cases and 584 deaths reported worldwide from 2010 to 2015. Fall said the risk to Madagascar remained very high, although the international risk was very low.
WHO has delivered antibiotics to Madagascar to treat up to 5,000 patients and as a prophylactic dose for up to 100,000 people who might be at risk, as well as 150,000 sets of personal protective equipment.
About 2,000 healthworkers are tracing people who have had contact with plague sufferers, which should allow the disease to be controlled relatively quickly, Fall said.
“I’m confident that with the strong team we have on the ground, combined with more partners coming and health workers, we will be able very quickly to reverse the trend.”
In Uganda, WHO hopes to halt an outbreak of Marburg, a highly infectious haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, which killed a 50-year-old woman on Oct. 11, three weeks after her brother died of similar symptoms.
“The positive thing is that Uganda is very used to managing this kind of outbreak,” Fall said. In the past decade, Uganda has already had four outbreaks of Marburg. An outbreak can kill up to 90 percent of the people who catch the disease.
Several hundred people may have been exposed to the virus at health facilities and at a traditional burial of the dead woman’s brother, who worked as a game hunter and lived near a cave inhabited by Rousettus bats, natural hosts of the Marburg virus.
Plague kills 94 in Madagascar
Plague kills 94 in Madagascar
Brazil’s Lula accuses Trump of seeking to forge ‘new UN’
- Lula defended multilateralism against what he called “the law of the jungle” in global affairs
- Key US allies including France and Britain have also expressed doubts
BRASILIA: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused Donald Trump on Friday of trying to create “a new UN” with his proposed “Board of Peace.”
The veteran leftist joins other world leaders who have avoided signing up for Trump’s new global conflict resolution organization, where a permanent seat costs $1 billion and the chairman is Trump himself.
“Instead of fixing” the United Nations, “what’s happening? President Trump is proposing to create a new UN where only he is the owner,” Lula said.
Trump unveiled his “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos Thursday, joined on stage by leaders and officials from 19 countries to sign its founding charter.
Lula defended multilateralism against what he called “the law of the jungle” in global affairs.
His remarks come a day after he spoke by phone with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who urged his counterpart to safeguard the “central role” of the United Nations in international affairs.
In his remarks on Friday, Lula said “the UN charter is being torn.”
Although originally intended to oversee Gaza’s rebuilding, the board’s charter does not seem to limit its role to the Palestinian territory and appears to want to rival the United Nations.
Key US allies including France and Britain have also expressed doubts.
London balked at the inclusion of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces are fighting in Ukraine after invading in 2022.
France said the charter as it currently stood was “incompatible” with its international commitments, especially its UN membership.
