With modern medicine, we often become overconfident because we feel we can cure any kind of illness. But some recent outbreaks show that we are not so safe. Diseases that are suspected to be extinct can still come back.
Outbreaks of leptospirosis, a rare bacterial infection commonly spread by rat urine occurs in New York, USA. One person was killed and two others were treated for the condition. BBC, Thursday (16/2/2017), New York City health officials have identified the case and found the infected victim is in a block in the Bronx region.
All three hospitalized patients reported acute kidney disease and liver failure. One of them died of the infection, but two others survived and had returned from the hospital.
Bronx city officials said the case occurred in the past two months. Nevertheless it is the first concentrated in a region.
"The disease can be serious but it can be treated with the antibiotics available," says Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
According to the New York Times report, from 2006 to 2016 there have been 26 cases of leptospirosis reported in the Bronx. The majority of the victims are women, there is only one male.
During the same period, most victims were from the Bronx with eight sufferers. Officials also took immediate action to reduce the mice population in the area, by providing counseling to tenants of the building on the prevention of leptospirosis outbreaks.
Leptospirosis is a disease by bacteria that spreads through the urine of the animal. Warm water floods after Ketsana's invasion became the ideal place to breed. Leptospriosis (also called Weil's disease) is transmitted through rats or animal fluids, and can enter the human body through small cuts in the skin or through the eyes, nose and mouth.
The high cases of Leptospriosis in the Bronx region make residents there are advised to avoid areas prone to prone rats. Then they are also asked to wear shoes while disposing of garbage at the disposal site in the apartment building.
There are several factors of spread, such as globalization, technology, and anti-vaccine movements. Symptoms include fever, nausea, muscle aches, vomiting, and diarrhea. This outbreak not only occurs in remote areas of poor countries, but even in developed countries like the United States.
Symptoms include dizziness, fever, kidney failure, and lung bleeding. The death rate is between 5 and 10 percent, even more. In the 2015 outbreak in Mumbai, India, the mortality rate reached 33 percent.
This disease is not just a tropical flood disease. Dogs in the United States were exposed. In 2015, leptospirosis in dogs spreads in Calfornia and Colorado. In 2009, the disease hit sea lions on the Oregon coast. Apparently the raccoon became the main carrier. However, in urban areas, up to 90 percent of urban mice carry this bacteria.
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