THE SITUATION TODAY Although the plague has claimed the lives of millions of people over the centuries, it no longer poses a major risk to public health. Spread by fleas, the disease mainly infects small animals, and can occasionally be transmitted to humans. According to figures released by the World Health Organization, 2,118 cases of human plague were reported in 2003, of which 182 were fata...

The spread of natural or weaponized drug-resistant plague among humans is a credible high consequence threat to public health that demands the prompt introduction of alternatives to antibiotics such as bacteriophage. Early attempts to treat plague with phages in the 1920s-1930s were sometimes promising but mostly failed, purportedly due to insufficient knowledge of phage biology and poor experi...

San Francisco played a crucial in the formulation of American immigration policy vis-à-vis Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period, it was often difficult to differentiate political struggles over the exclusion of Asians from other conflicts. This article examines one such arena: an acrimonious, well-documented argument in 1899 between Federal and various S...

For the first time, researchers have confirmed a long-suspected link between precipitation and plague. After reviewing nearly half a cen-tury's worth of data, a team of scientists from New Mexico and Colorado have found a strong tie between above-average precipitation during New Mexico winters and an increase in human cases of the still-dreaded plague. Their research, funded by the National Sci...

Human plague remains a public health concern in Tanzania despite its quiescence in most foci for years, considering the recurrence nature of the disease. Despite the long-standing history of this problem, there have not been recent reviews of the current knowledge on plague in Tanzania. This work aimed at providing a current overview of plague in Tanzania in terms of its introduction, potential...

Human plague risks (Yersinia pestis infection) are greatest when epizootics cause high mortality among this bacterium's natural rodent hosts. Therefore, health departments in plague-endemic areas commonly establish animal-based surveillance programs to monitor Y. pestis infection among plague hosts and vectors. The primary objectives of our study were to determine whether passive animal-based p...

During 2004-2014, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) declared 54% of plague cases worldwide. Using national data, we characterized the epidemiology of human plague in DRC for this period. All 4,630 suspected human plague cases and 349 deaths recorded in DRC came from Orientale Province. Pneumonic plague cases (8.8% of total) occurred during 2 major outbreaks in mining camps in the equat...

Carnivores obtain plague infection through ingestion of infected rodents or rabbits or via flea bite. Most are resistant to infection, show little or no symptoms, and produce antibodies to Yersinia pestis which may persist for several months. Consequently, carnivores can be used as serological plague sentinels using the specific passive or indirect hemagglutination test in the laboratory. A car...

Plague, a zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, has been responsible for at least 3 pandemics. During 1582-1583, a plague outbreak devastated the seaport of Alghero in Sardinia. By analyzing contemporary medical texts and local documentation, we uncovered the pivotal role played by the Protomedicus of Alghero, Quinto Tiberio Angelerio (1532-1617), in controlling the epidemic...

BACKGROUND Plague remains a public health problem in specific areas located in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. Its prevention and control encompasses adequate clinical management and timely laboratory diagnosis. However, understanding communities' interaction with its surrounding ecosystem as well as the differences between community members and institutional stakeholders regarding the root ...