THREE TIBETAN herdsmen have died of pneumonic plague, one of the deadliest diseases known to man, in a remote part of northwest China’s Qinghai province, and health officials have sealed off the area to stop a pandemic.
The latest victim was a 64-year-old man named Danzhi, the Xinhua news agency reported.
He was a neighbour of a 32-year-old herdsman in Ziketan and a 37-year-old man who died earlier. A further nine people – mainly relatives of the herders – are infected and in a hospital, according to the local health bureau.
China has become proactive in dealing with infectious diseases in the last few years. It was criticised for being too slow in reacting to the Sars epidemic in 2002, but has recently introduced swift and stringent measures to counter the spread of the swine flu virus.
Police set up checkpoints around Ziketan after the outbreak was detected last Thursday. The township is in a remote region, covering a huge area and with a population of 10,000, most of whom are Tibetans.
Health officials were keeping a close watch for the telltale coughs and fevers that signal the onset of the disease, which is spread through the air and can be passed from person to person through coughing.
Pneumonic plague can kill within 24 hours, but it is also largely curable if diagnosed in time. The World Health Organisation says that while the disease can kill 60 per cent of its victims if left unchecked, early diagnosis and treatment with antibiotics can cut mortality rate to less than 15 per cent.
Its close links to the bacteria that causes the bubonic plague that killed huge swathes of the population of medieval Europe ensures that it occupies a particularly horrifying place in the collective psyche.
China suffered a pandemic of plague which began in Yunnan province in the 19th century, which subsequently spread worldwide. It killed 100,000 people in southern China towards the end of the 19th century and it remained endemic in Hong Kong until 1929.
In 2004 eight villagers in Qinghai died of plague, most of them infected after killing or eating wild marmots. Marmots are related to gophers and prairie dogs. They live in the grasslands of China’s northwest and Mongolia, where villagers often hunt them for meat. In 2003 plague sickened 2,118 people in nine countries, killing 182, according to the WHO. The vast majority of cases were in Africa.
