- BATON ROUGE, La. (Reuters)
- The West Nile virus has killed four of the 58 people in Louisiana known
to have been infected with the rare mosquito-borne illness, putting this
year's outbreak on pace to become the largest ever in the United States,
state health officials said on Friday.
-
- "There is no sign that this is going to go down.
This is only the beginning," said Dr. Raoult Ratard, an epidemiologist
with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. "We'll probably
end up with the worst outbreak."
-
- The largest previous U.S. outbreak was in 1999 in New
York state, where 62 people were infected with the disease and seven died.
With the latest deaths, at least 22 have died from the disease since West
Nile arrived in the United States.
-
- The four victims, the first in the United States this
year, include an 83-year-old woman and three men, aged 53, 72 and 75. All
four suffered from other illnesses that weakened their immune systems and
made them more vulnerable to the deadly form of the infection, Ratard said.
-
- West Nile, common in Africa and Asia for decades but
not seen in the Americas until 1999, is spread to humans by the bite of
an infected mosquito.
-
- Most people who contract West Nile suffer nothing more
than headaches and flu-like symptoms, but the elderly, chronically ill
and others with weak immune systems can develop fatal encephalitis, or
brain inflammation.
-
- The latest outbreak seems to have emanated from the Lake
Ponchartrain area in the southeastern part of Louisiana, but has since
spread to the farthest northern reaches of the state, Ratard said. Cases
have also been discovered in neighboring Texas and Mississippi.
-
- In a bid to get as much as $5 million in federal aid
money to pay for mosquito control efforts, Gov. Mike Foster on Thursday
declared a state of emergency in 19 of the state's 64 parishes.
-
- Public health officials said they were concerned the
disease had erupted so early in the summer. Previous outbreaks were concentrated
in late August and early September.
-
- "I think it is going to show up in other western
states this year. It's not time for panic, it's time for people to take
public health precautions," said Dr. Bob Campbell, an epidemiologist
with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
- He noted that only about one in 200 people who contract
West Nile virus develop the potentially fatal encephalitis or meningitis.
-
- At least 31 states, from Massachusetts to Texas and the
District of Columbia, have reported some West Nile activity in 2002, according
to the CDC's latest update on the virus. The majority of those cases involved
animals, Campbell said.
-
- Most people can avoid becoming infected by wearing long-sleeved
clothing, using mosquito repellent and eliminating the standing water in
which mosquitoes breed, Campbell said.
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