Ronan Kelly
Retired 2020
Fast spread of 'wild' disease worries city docs
TNN, Dec 18, 2010, 06.50am IST
CHENNAI: When a 54-year-old woman from Chintadripet was admitted to Apollo Hospitals earlier this week with severe breathing difficulty, diarrhoea and high fever, doctors initially suspected pneumonia. But when the doctors saw a little black scar on her hip, the diagnosis was rewritten as scrub typhus ? a rare zoonotic disease usually contracted from the wild. What puzzled doctors was that the patient had not travelled anywhere outside the city recently.
While Apollo Hospitals alone claims to have seen at least 200 such cases this year, compared to just 15 in 2009, many other city hospitals, such as Kanchi Kamakoti Childs Trust, say that they too have seen similar numbers in children. The disease spreads through bites of chiggers (mites found in forests). The mite injects a bacterium, called rickettsia tsutsugamushi, into the blood stream.
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Read more: Fast spread of 'wild' disease worries city docs - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ty-docs/articleshow/7121160.cms#ixzz18SpqOfN6
TNN, Dec 18, 2010, 06.50am IST
CHENNAI: When a 54-year-old woman from Chintadripet was admitted to Apollo Hospitals earlier this week with severe breathing difficulty, diarrhoea and high fever, doctors initially suspected pneumonia. But when the doctors saw a little black scar on her hip, the diagnosis was rewritten as scrub typhus ? a rare zoonotic disease usually contracted from the wild. What puzzled doctors was that the patient had not travelled anywhere outside the city recently.
While Apollo Hospitals alone claims to have seen at least 200 such cases this year, compared to just 15 in 2009, many other city hospitals, such as Kanchi Kamakoti Childs Trust, say that they too have seen similar numbers in children. The disease spreads through bites of chiggers (mites found in forests). The mite injects a bacterium, called rickettsia tsutsugamushi, into the blood stream.
...
Read more: Fast spread of 'wild' disease worries city docs - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ty-docs/articleshow/7121160.cms#ixzz18SpqOfN6