Lethal tropical disease returns
2000-10-23 16:49
Johannesburg - The lethal tropical disease Kala-Azar has broken out in Calcutta, India's most populous city, reports said on Monday.
This parasitic disease, which kills by destroying liver, spleen, and bone marrow, was last seen in Calcutta in 1961. It was thought to have been eliminated from the city following a prolonged malaria control campaign.
Although Kala-Azar is spread by sandflies and not by mosquitoes as is malaria, sandflies are susceptible to the insecticides used to combat malaria carrying mosquitoes.
Calcutta's first case of Kala-Azar in 39 years was confirmed by the city's School of Tropical Medicine, whose head, Professor P K Sarkar, described the disease's re-emergence as "a very alarming development."
British Airways travel clinics medical director Dr Andrew Jamieson says, "The deterioration of the situation in India should sound an alarm in Africa. Kala-Azar occurs in Africa, where HIV has been facilitating the spread of this disease. We have seen this happening in East Africa."
Jamieson explained that Kala-Azar is both difficult and expensive to treat, therapy often taking months to achieve cure.
In cases where people are HIV-positive, Jamieson emphasised that currently available treatments were unable to cure the disease.
In such patients, lifelong suppressive treatment must be given a remedy most governments were unable to afford.
Jamieson added that control of Kala-Azar was made difficult by the fact that the disease could hide in a number of animal "reservoirs," including domestic dogs and rodents.
Kala-Azar, also known as Leishmaniasis, is spreading at the rate of 500 000 new cases annually, and 350 million people throughout the world are currently at risk of infection.
As no vaccine is at present available against the disease, Jamieson advises travellers to affected countries to adopt personal protection measures against insect bites, such as the use of effective insect repellents. - News24 / Medinfo