BLACK DEATH. The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio's Wellcome. Wikimedia Commons photo.
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By JIGGER J. JERUSALEM
Correspondent

REP. Rufus Rodriguez of this city’s 2nd District today called on health, immigration and port officials to implement measures aimed at preventing a plague that wiped out 60 percent of the population of Europe in the Middle Ages from spreading to the country.

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BLACK DEATH. The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio’s Wellcome. Wikimedia Commons photo.

Rodriguez’s call came in the wake of a Chinese state media report that doctors in Beijing confirmed that two people from the Chinese Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, contracted the pneumonic plague.

The US’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the plague is caused by Yersinia pestis which can be transmitted by fleas and cycles naturally among rodents. The CDC said humans can contract the disease from infected pets like dogs and cats. The World Health Organization (WHO) has classified it as reemerging disease.

While there is no effective vaccine against the plague yet, antibiotics have been proven to prevent complications and even death.

Rodriguez said the national government, particularly the Department of Health, should put in place mechanisms to prevent the deadly disease from spreading the country given the daily Chinese arrivals in the country.

The Bureau of Immigration said some 3.12 million Chinese entered the country from January 2016 to May 2018.

“We have to tighten our quarantine of Chinese coming from the affected region of China,” Rodriguez said.

He said the Duterte administration should also ask the Chinese government to strictly enforce its internal quarantine rules, and isolate people found to be infected.

“We should keep a close watch,” he said, referring to the plague.

Rodriguez said the Chinese government should also consider asking the WHO to send its experts to China so they could help in containing the plague.

Based on historical accounts, the plague or “Black Death” killed some 50 million people in the 14th century in Europe. The plague has been cropping up in modern times in the US, some parts of Asia, South America and Africa, according to CDC.

Pneumonic plague, one of the forms of the dreaded “Black Death,” adversely affects the lungs. The symptoms: high fever, chills, cough, breathing difficulties, and coughing up bloody mucus. If not treated immediately, it is almost always fatal, according to CDC.

Another common form is the bubonic plague, which causes swollen, painful lymph node (usually in the groin, armpit or neck), fever, chills, headache, and extreme exhaustion.

The CDC said that if not treated early, the bacteria can spread to other parts of the body and cause pneumonic plague or septicemic plague. In the case of the latter, plague bacteria multiply in the bloodstream, resulting in high fever, exhaustion, light-headedness, abdominal pain, and shock and organ failure.

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