News
PRC Approves Electric Co-op's Variance

Biomass Firm Claims Deal

A Forge-Fired Degree

School Year Starts With Buses Rolling Smoothly

'They Took My Life Savings'

Minors Work at DWI Memorial

Saddle Makes All the Difference

Moriarty Discusses New School

Trustee May Step in for Hibbs

Committee Tackles Canyon Traffic

More
News

HOME	CLASSIFIEDS	OBITUARIES	SPORTS	OPINION

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Brasher: Plague Is A 'Part of Life'

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
    A hastily called meeting to address concerns about plague in the East Mountains area drew a crowd of more than 80 people Monday night.
    "There is no reason for panic," Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Brasher said at the start of the meeting at Los Vecinos Community center in Tijeras. "Plague is a part of life ... it's endemic (to this area)."
    The meeting was called with little advance notice and followed the announcement last week that a 3-year-old Tijeras-area boy had died of plague.
    The boy died May 28, but it took health officials 10 days to confirm that plague was the cause.
    It was the first plague case reported in Bernalillo County this year. Four cases have been confirmed in New Mexico so far— including one each in Santa Fe and Torrance counties— which is quite a few, according to health officials.
    "We're concerned for all of you," said Dr. Mark DiMenna, environmental health supervisor with the Albuquerque Environmental Health Department.
    DiMenna said recent moisture has led to a larger rodent population, and rodents often carry plague-infected fleas.
    Days before he died, the 3-year-old came to the hospital with a lump in his neck, the result of an infected flea bite. Unbeknownst to the family and medical professionals, the lump was actually a bubo, or a swollen lymph node near the site of the infected bite, according to DiMenna.
    The boy was initially seen for a fever and sore throat on May 25, then brought to urgent care two days later and sent home with a prescription for the antibiotic amoxicillin.
    The family made three attempts to administer the medicine.
    "Unfortunately he was only able to keep down one dose," DiMenna said.
    Within 24 hours, the boy died.
    As the boy's condition declined, the family called 911. Life support failed to save the boy's life, according to Chris Petroff of Bernalillo County Emergency Medical Services.
    A blood culture took about 10 days for the cause of death to be positively identified as bubonic plague because the single dose of antibiotics had interfered with the bacteria, DiMenna said.
   
Undetermined origin
    While at the scene of the boy's death, police officers became concerned about unsanitary conditions. Three other children were living in the home.
    Police called child welfare officials after the boy's death was investigated. There were about 10 cats on the property— some of them only semi-domestic, according to health officials— and possibly a few dogs.
    Five of the cats are now at Albuquerque and Santa Fe animal shelters. Four of those have been tested for plague and have all tested negative.
    Because of the state of the family's living conditions, the state Children, Youth and Families Department were involved.
    "Sometimes families in crisis, for whatever reason, will neglect their home," said Romain Serrano, a CYFD spokeswoman, in a phone interview last week.
    The exact source of the boy's plague infection has yet to be found, according to DiMenna, and he said the family's living conditions have not been proved to be the cause of the boy's death.
    Only one dead animal, a squirrel, has been found on the property.
    "It's not the huge menagerie (of dead animals) that you're hearing," DiMenna said.
    He added that, because the boy was around wildlife outside the home as well, the exact source of infection may never be found.
    While unsanitary conditions may put a person at greater risk, he said, residents in the East Mountains area may have a "Martha Stewart" home and still get the plague.
    "This property is not that special ... everybody in this county lives in an endemic place for plague," DiMenna said.
   
Dispelling myths
    DiMenna and George Schroeder of the Bernalillo County Environmental Health Department fielded a number of questions and attempted to set a few other myths straight as well.
    One man at the meeting, who was wearing a painter's mask, said he lived within an eighth of a mile of the dead boy's home. The man seemed concerned that he'd contracted plague from his pet dog.
    The most common way for a person to get plague from a dog is from an infected flea bite, DiMenna said.
    According to Schroeder, for the man to have gotten plague from his dog, which apparently did not have fleas, the disease would have to have moved into the dog's lungs, or developed into what is called pneumonic plague. Pneumonic plague is very rare, however.
    The painter's masks came up again at the meeting, this time during a discussion about hantavirus.
    Hantavirus is spread when an infected rodent's feces and urine dries, turns to dust and is inhaled. Health officials said a painter's mask is relatively ineffective at blocking inhalation of the dust.
    There was also some confusion about avoiding disease from dead rodents. One resident mentioned that she had sprayed a trapped rodent with a bleach solution to avoid plague.
    Spraying a dead animal with bleach is effective against hantavirus, according to health officials, but plague is generally spread by infected fleas. When the flea's host animal dies, it begins looking for a new host. In that case, dusting the animal with flea powder is the proper way to prevent infection.
    If there is a choice to be made, however, DiMenna said he would choose spraying the animal with bleach.
    For more information on any of these diseases, visit www.cdc.gov or www.bernco.gov/live.departments.asp?dept=2330.
   
   
    Recent case
    A Santa Fe County woman was diagnosed with plague, bringing the total to four cases this year Page 6