In the past two weeks three tourists unfortunately died among about 150 passengers and crew on a cruise ship MV Hondius off the west coast of the African continent where most of those malaria and TB deaths occurred. The Hondius had a hantavirus outbreak, known to have infected fewer than 10 people but including at least two of those that died.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 10,000 to 100,000 hantavirus cases occur every year, spread across the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. The current media coverage and WHO news conferences therefore concern about one thousandth of the cases expected this year. Europe averages about 2,000 to 5,000 – they simply have not been newsworthy.
Hantavirus is transmitted from mice and rats through their faeces, urine, saliva or bite. The Andean variety, which occurred on the cruise ship, can also sometimes transmit from a sick infected person. However, as the low number of cases on the ship demonstrates, the risk of human-to-human transmission is not great. It is, however, a nasty virus, with reported mortality around 15% of cases and sometimes significantly higher.
So, among the 170,000 average deaths in the world each day, and thousands from the WHO’s traditional priority diseases, why the excitement over Hantavirus? Why the pictures of hazmat-suited emergency response crews and desperate contact tracing when we don’t usually notice? Why is the Director-General of the entire WHO spending so much time on this, when diseases of poverty are rising and basics such as nutrition funding are falling? A fascinating question.
The WHO wants the United States and Argentina to rejoin, and WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus has raised this in his hantavirus briefings....<<<Read More>>>...
