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West Nile Virus Kills Four In Louisiana

By Michael Depp
8-2-2



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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