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WHAT IS BUBONIC PLAGUE OR BLACK DEATH

Bubonic Plague

A city in northern China — Bayannur in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region — on July 5, 2020, sounded an alert after a suspected case of bubonic plague was reported there. This was a Level-III warning of plague prevention and control. The local health authority announced that the warning period would continue until the end of 2020.

"At present, there is a risk of a human plague epidemic spreading in this city. The public should improve its self-protection awareness and ability, and report abnormal health conditions promptly, the local health authority said.

The plague warning comes at a time when the world is already battling with the coronavirus pandemic.

What is bubonic plague?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), bubonic plague is caused by Yersinia Pestis, a zoonotic bacteria usually found in small mammals and their fleas. The symptoms of the disease appear after an incubation period of one to seven days. The disease usually spreads from bites of fleas that have fed upon infected creatures like mice, rats, rabbits and squirrels.

Bubonic plague explained

There are two main forms of a plague — bubonic and pneumonic (when plague advances to the lungs). According to WHO, bubonic plague, the most common form, is characterised by painful swollen lymph nodes or 'buboes'. It is a rare disease now — from 2010 to 2015, there were 3,248 cases reported worldwide, including 584 deaths. It is now mostly endemic in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, and Peru.

How fatal is bubonic plague?

In the middle ages, a bubonic plague pandemic, also known as the 'black death', had wiped out more than half of Europe's population. However, with the availability of antibiotics, the disease is largely treatable now. If not treated on time, bubonic plague has a case fatality rate of 30 per cent to 60 per cent, while its septicaemic (circulation in bloodstream) and pneumonic kind can touch 100 per cent fatality. If diagnosed and treated on time, the disease has about a 10 per cent fatality rate.

What are the symptoms of bubonic plague?

According to WHO, symptoms of bubonic plague include a sudden onset of fever, chills, head and body aches, weakness, vomiting and nausea. In bubonic plague, the lymph node becomes inflamed, tense and painful (almost the size of a chicken's egg), called a ‘bubo’. At advanced stages of the infection, the inflamed lymph nodes can turn into open sores filled with pus. When it advances to the lungs, pneumonic plague becomes the most virulent form of plague. Septicaemic plague (in bloodstream) can cause tissue death and subsequent blackening of fingers, toes and nose, according to health experts.

How is bubonic plague transmitted?

According to WHO, human-to-human transmission of bubonic plague is rare. However, any person with pneumonic plague may transmit the disease via droplets to other humans.

Bubonic plague in history

Bubonic plague resulted in 'black death', one of the worst pandemics in human history that claimed millions of lives in the 14th century. The disease is expected to have originated somewhere in Asia, spreading through China and India, before killing an estimated two-thirds of the European population in the 1340s and 1350s. While antibiotics can treat the disease now, the airborne spread of the highly contagious disease then wreaked havoc and frenzy across the world; healthy people were found dead overnight, and sailors started arriving at ports either dead or rotting, or covered in black contusions, pus and blood. There were riots and massacres, and the disease is believed to have been brought under control by strict quarantine measures and public hygiene enactments.

How did bubonic plague get the name black death?

According to the Washington Post, the Black Death, earned its name from a symptom: lymph nodes that became blackened and swollen after bacteria entered through the skin.

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WHAT IS BUBONIC PLAGUE OR BLACK DEATH

Bubonic Plague

BUBONIC PLAGUE OR BLACK DEATH NEWS

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