Woman Is Treated for the Plague
Los Angles Times
19 April 2006
Michelle Keller
A Los Angeles woman is being treated for bubonic plague, the first case of the age-old pestilence in the county since 1984, health officials announced Tuesday.
The infected patient, whose identity was withheld, came down with symptoms last week and continues to be treated in a hospital for the disease, which is characterized by swollen, black lumps under the skin, officials said. She may have contracted the disease from fleas in the area around her Country Club Park neighborhood. . . .
. . . Although human cases of the plague are uncommon, it is endemic to ground squirrels and some rodents in parts of the Angeles National Forest, Tehachapi, Lake Isabella and Frazier Park.
Area House Finches Fall Prey to Disease
Contra Costa Times
19 April 2006
Denis Cuff
WALNUT CREEK: People are not in danger, but officials urge removal or disinfection of feeders
Wildlife regulators urged Californians on Tuesday to sanitize bird feeders to slow the state's first outbreak of an avian disease discovered in finches brought to a Walnut Creek wild animal center.
The bacterialike disease mycoplasmosis does not threaten humans, as does the avian flu or West Nile virus, veterinarians say. But the disease can be murder on house finches, a common wild bird.
The disease has sickened, blinded and killed several house finches turned in to the Lindsay Wildlife Museum by Contra Costa residents this year, state and museum officials announced Tuesday.
Deadly Bird flu Virus Detected in Sudan
19 April 2006
Mohammed Ali Saeed
Independent Online
Khartoum - Sudan on Tuesday reported its first cases of the deadly strain of bird flu in poultry and said that a human had contracted the disease.
"Laboratory tests have shown the presence of the bird flu virus in Khartoum and Gezira states," ministry of animal resources official Ahmed Mustafa Hassan told reporters.
He also said the owner of a poultry farm in the Khartoum area had been admitted to hospital with suspected bird flu. Health minister Tabita Butros Shokaya later said the man had tested positive.
John Jabbour, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) regional health regulation officer, confirmed cases of the deadly H5N1 virus in Sudan but could not confirm any cases of contraction by humans.
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