Possible New Illness Along The Orinoco - Nearly 40 Confirmed Dead In Villages - BBC

[hatrack]

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But it is this isolation that also makes life so hard for the Warao. These people have few material goods aside from the basic huts they live in. Theirs is a hand to mouth existence. They get by, but, when illness strikes, they struggle and suffer. The child mortality rate is high. Poor nutrition and hygiene and inadequate health care means simple preventable problems, like diarrhoea and respiratory infections, claim the lives of many infants. Now, in some communities, something else is killing them.

I met up with Charles Briggs, a professor of anthropology at California's Berkeley University and his wife Clara, a Venezuelan doctor. Both have spent many years living and working with rural communities here, enough time for Charles to become fluent in Warao. They both know the Delta well, and care for and respect its people.

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The patients had high fevers, they were partially paralysed, thick saliva was coming from their mouths and they could not drink. Some even feared water. "We thought it must be rabies," she said, explaining that some of the patients had been bitten by bats, carriers of this killer disease. Together with community leaders, the team wrote up their findings and began a long journey to the capital, Caracas. At first they were refused access to a minister, but they persisted and eventually presented their findings to the government. It was not the first time. The Waraos had told health authorities before, that they thought something strange was going on, but they say they did not get much response. This time was different.

The government set up a commission to investigate, heading to the Delta with a boat load of experts. After its tour of the region, the health ministry announced that it had found no evidence of rabies. "There hasn't been rabies in the Delta for 20 years," it said in a statement without giving more information on the scope or nature of its inquiries. "But we are still trying to find the cause of these deaths" it said.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7633164.stm

[kestrel91316]

1. Sounds very much like rabies. They need to keep looking. They may

have a new strain, or a virus very similar to rabies, along the lines of those weird bat-transmitted neuro diseases in Aus/New Guinea and that neck of the woods. Nipah, Hendra?