Russia plague scare: What should India do?
Should India worry too much about the suspected plague case in Russia? And can it do anything in advance to ensure the ghost of the Covid pandemic doesn’t come back to visit us?
Global health authorities are closely monitoring the situation following the mysterious death of a lab worker in Siberia, which has sparked fears of a potential plague outbreak. While Russia attributes the death to pneumonia and maintains that preventive isolation has ended, the World Health Organization continues to seek a confirmed diagnosis to conduct a full risk assessment
Global health authorities are closely monitoring the situation following the mysterious death of a lab worker in Siberia, which has sparked fears of a potential plague outbreak. While Russia attributes the death to pneumonia and maintains that preventive isolation has ended, the World Health Organization continues to seek a confirmed diagnosis to conduct a full risk assessment
Global health authorities are closely monitoring the situation following the mysterious death of a lab worker in Siberia, which has sparked fears of a potential plague outbreak. While Russia attributes the death to pneumonia and maintains that preventive isolation has ended, the World Health Organization continues to seek a confirmed diagnosis to conduct a full risk assessment
Ever since the death of a lab worker in Russia’s Siberia a fortnight ago, the world has been on tenterhooks about whether another pandemic situation is in the offing. Confounding the situation further has been Russian authorities not being forthcoming with information, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) still looking for answers.
Officially, India’s Health Ministry has not responded formally to the situation, though it has been proactive on the sidelines. According to reports, surveillance has been heightened, while state labs as well as central ones under ICMR have been alerted. Stocks of medicines like tetracycline, an antibiotic used to treat plague, have been tabulated and found to be in order. But keeping the nightmares of Covid just a few years back, is there anything more India can do?
No need for alarm is the message from Prabha Xaxa, Medical Director of International SOS. “For travellers, nothing has changed significantly. The risk of respiratory infections is always present, and the usual preventive measures remain the most effective. These include staying up to date with recommended vaccinations, practising good hand hygiene, avoiding close contact with people who are unwell, covering coughs and sneezes, and considering a mask in crowded indoor settings when respiratory illnesses are circulating.”
The complexity this time has been Russia refusing to state that the case of a lab worker’s death was due to Plague — officially, it has stated that it was a case of pneumonia, and that the preventive isolation of a close circle of people is also over.
That’s it. WHO stated that it cannot yet conduct a full risk assessment because a confirmed diagnosis was still lacking. The positive to it? The fact that no additional cases or evidence of ongoing transmission has been reported so far.
“The risk diminishes as more time passes without others falling sick,” Prabha pointed out, adding, “Unfortunately, we may never know the cause of death. A single unexplained case should not be viewed as a predictor of a wider outbreak. Instead, it should be an opportunity to review preparedness plans, identify gaps and find solutions.”
For all the fear and foreboding that the word ‘plague’ evokes — the havoc it caused in India’s Surat back in the 1990s as well as the whole ‘Black Death’ in Europe of the middle ages (it wiped out one third of the population of the continent between 1347 and 1353), the fact remains that plague breaks out regularly in certain regions and does not cause more than a handful of deaths. An average of 5 cases of plague are reported every year around the world, mostly in agrarian regions, and do not necessarily lead to large-scale outbreaks.
While the acute incidents we know of — Europe and Surat, for example- were bubonic plague, caused by rodents, the worry this time is also because it could be a case of pneumonic plague. Unlike the former, spread by rats and such, pneumonic plague spreads pneumonic fever, which may spread through breathing and coughing — bringing back all the scare of the Covid-19 pandemic once again.
There are also two other types, like septicemic plague caused by an infection that multiplies directly in the bloodstream. It can result from an infected flea bite, animal contact, or progress from untreated bubonic plague, according to USA’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as a mighty rare form called pharyngeal plague.