Dog suspected as source of plague in China

A dog is suspected to be the origin of an outbreak of pneumonic plague in northwest China that has killed three people and left 10,000 under strict quarantine.

Ziketan, a remote town in a Tibetan area of Qinghai province, has been locked down since Saturday in an effort to contain the spread of the highly virulent disease.

One patient was in critical condition and eight others were infected, most of them relatives of the first fatality, a 32-year-old herdsman, or local doctors.



Initial tests had shown that the herdsman's dead dog was the likely origin of the outbreak, said professor Wang Hu, director of the Qinghai disease control bureau.

Wang said it was likely that the dog died after eating a plague-infected marmot and that the man became infected when he was bitten by fleas while burying the dead dog. He died three days later.

"The first victim buried the dead dog without any protection. After he became infected, his relatives and neighbours were in close contact with him without taking any protective measures, leading to their infection," Wang was quoted as saying. The World Health Organization says the bacteria which causes the plague is endemic in some rodents in the region, such as marmots.