Plague in India: A Review
Journal Title: Journal of Communicable Diseases - Year 2018, Vol 50, Issue 3
Abstract
Plague, most ancient, dreadful and formidable pestilential rodent borne disease was a major public health problem in India till the mid twentieth century A.D. Plague is one of the three epidemic prone diseases still subject to the International Health Regulations and notifiable to the World Health Organization (WHO). In India mortality due to plague reached zero level during 1967. However, sporadic cases of suspected human plague were reported from Himachal Pradesh during 1966 and 1983-1984 and Karnataka during 1984 and at times localized sylvatic plague incidence encountered in the last decade from the trijunction of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in peninsular India. During 1994 a bubonic plague outbreak at Beed district, Maharashtra and pneumonic plague outbreak in Surat, Gujarat were recorded. After 8 long years of quiescence a localized outbreak of pneumonic plague occurred in Himachal Pradesh in 2002. In 2004, a bubonic plague outbreak occurred in Uttarkashi district, Uttarakhand. Plague continues to exist as a major public health problem in many countries of the world. In several countries plague has remained quiescent for years together before reappearing all of a sudden. The enzootic foci of plague in India is believed to be present in four groups of foci in northern, central, western and southern India. From 1989 to 1994 active zoonotic foci of plague were detected from the trijunction of Tamil Nadu (Krishnagiri district), Andhra Pradesh (Chittoor district) and Karnataka (Kolar and Bangalore rural district). As the sylvatic rodents live in wild and peri-domestic situations and maintain the natural transmission in enzootic foci for centuries together, eradication of the disease is highly impossible. Natural decline in plague incidence would not justify the conclusion that plague has disappeared from the area. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the number of plague cases shows rising trend worldwide, and outbreaks are reappearing in various countries of the world after decades of quiescence
Authors and Affiliations
Shyamal Biswas
Keywords
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