The Mongolian news agency reported that a 15-year-old boy had died of bubonic plague. He got infected from a marmot.
Mongolia: teen victim of the plague
The Mongolian health department laboratory confirmed that the boy died of the plague, which he contracted from an infected groundhog. People who had contact with him are in isolation. Part of the Gobi-Altai province in western Mongolia was also sent to quarantine.
The BBC reports on websites that representatives of the health ministry visited areas near the Mongolian border a week ago in connection with the outbreak of plague cases and warned local residents not to hunt marmots and eat their flesh.
Shepherds in Our Country’s Altai mountain region traditionally hunt marmots and ignore government warnings about plague spread, writes the BBC.
Meanwhile, the condition of a patient who fell ill with bubonic plague in China is improving, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
Plague – New Cases in the World
The government of Bayan Nur in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China, issued a warning in early July after a case of bubonic plague was diagnosed at a local hospital. They called for an end to marmot hunting and not to eat their meat.
- We have written more about it here: Warning against the plague in China
World Health Organization (WHO) representative Margaret Harris said on July 7 that the sudden onset of bubonic plague had been dealt with well in Inner Mongolia and posed little threat. In November 2019, four human cases of plague were reported in the region, including two cases of pulmonary plague, a more serious form of the disease.
Bubonic plague, called the “Black Death” in the Middle Ages, is a very contagious and often fatal disease; it is mainly spread by rodents. In China, between 2009 and 2018, 26 cases of the plague were diagnosed, including 11 fatalities.
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