National and state public health officials have large supplies of drugs needed in the event of a bioterrorism attack. These supplies can be sent anywhere in the United States within 12 hours.
What should someone do if they suspect they or others have been exposed to plague? Get immediate medical attention: To prevent illness, a person who has been exposed to pneumonic plague must receive antibiotic treatment without delay.
If an exposed person becomes ill, antibiotics must be administered within 24 hours of their first symptoms to reduce the risk of death. Notify authorities: Immediately notify local or state health departments so they can begin to investigate and control the problem right away. How can the general public reduce the risk of getting pneumonic plague from another person or giving it to someone else?
If possible, avoid close contact with other people. People having direct and close contact with someone with pneumonic plague should wear tightly fitting disposable surgical masks. If surgical masks are not available, even makeshift face coverings made of layers of cloth may be helpful in an emergency. People who have been exposed to a contagious person can be protected from developing plague by receiving prompt antibiotic treatment.
How is plague diagnosed? The first step is evaluation by a health worker. Once the laboratory receives the sample, preliminary results can be ready in less than two hours. Confirmation will take longer, usually 24 to 48 hours. How long can plague bacteria exist in the environment? Yersinia pestis is easily destroyed by sunlight and drying. Even so, when released into air, the bacterium will survive for up to one hour, depending on conditions.
Is a vaccine available to prevent pneumonic plague? Currently, no plague vaccine is available in the United States. If you begin to feel ill and have been in an area where plague has been known to occur, seek immediate medical attention. You'll need treatment with medication to prevent serious complications or death.
In the United States, plague has been transmitted to humans in several western and southwestern states — primarily New Mexico, Arizona, California and Colorado. Worldwide, plague is most common in rural and semirural parts of Africa especially the African island of Madagascar , South America and Asia. The plague bacteria, Yersinia pestis, is transmitted to humans through the bites of fleas that have previously fed on infected animals, such as:.
The bacteria can also enter your body if a break in your skin comes into contact with an infected animal's blood. Domestic cats and dogs can become infected with plague from flea bites or from eating infected rodents.
Pneumonic plague, which affects the lungs, is spread by inhaling infectious droplets coughed into the air by a sick animal or person. The risk of developing plague is very low. Worldwide, only a few thousand people develop plague each year.
However, your plague risk can be increased depending on the area where you live and travel, your job, and your hobbies. Plague outbreaks are most common in rural and semirural areas that are overcrowded, have poor sanitation and have a high rodent population. The greatest number of human plague infections occur in Africa, especially the African island of Madagascar. Plague has also been transmitted to humans in parts of Asia and South America.
People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at night could be dead by morning. Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia pestis. The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century. They know that the bacillus travels from person to person through the air , as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds—which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another.
Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes. Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible. In the middle of the 14th century, however, there seemed to be no rational explanation for it.
No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it. Physicians relied on crude and unsophisticated techniques such as bloodletting and boil-lancing practices that were dangerous as well as unsanitary and superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs and bathing in rosewater or vinegar.
Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick. Doctors refused to see patients; priests refused to administer last rites; and shopkeepers closed their stores. Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people.
In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage. And many people, desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones. Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment—retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness.
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