Health News
Plague outbreak kills second person in China
Aug 3, 2009, 4:56 GMT
Beijing - A second person has died of pneumonic plague in north-west China after authorities placed a town under quarantine, state media reported Monday.
A man identified only as Danzin, 37, from Ziketan town in the Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture died Sunday morning from the infectious disease, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Danzin was the neighbour of a 32-year-old herder who died earlier in the outbreak, which has sickened another 10 people, mostly relatives of the herder, the agency said.
Local authorities have closed off Ziketan town, which has a population of 10,000, and are searching for those who have had close contact with the infected, an earlier report said.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), pneumonic plague is an air-born disease that can be spread from person to person through coughing.
Plague is endemic in many countries in Africa, the former Soviet Union, the Americas and Asia, with 1,000 to 2,000 cases reported each year, according to WHO.
Chinese authorities have urged those who have travelled to Ziketan since July 16 and developed a fever or coughing to go to local disease control centres.
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