- JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
-- The Afrikaans-language Sunday newspaper "Rapport" writes
this week that the province of Gauteng (Transvaal) suffers from unusually
high levels of rat infestations by three varieties of rats - the black
roof-rat, the brown rat and a mysterious black/white species which an
animal expert believes could be a new hybrid.
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- Ronald Springfield, owner of one of Johannesburg's many
vermin- control companies, has been doing this job for 34 years. He has
never seen so many huge rat infestations before in his life as he does
now. Springfield: "They are simply everywhere now, in all the slums,
townships and the luxury-mansions alike all over greater Johannesburg."
He used to be called upon mainly in the winter months to exterminate rat
families which had moved into warmer dwellings, but now he's getting about
ten callsa day to destroy rat populations every day of the year, he said.
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- The black roof-rat (rattus-rattus) is a known bubonic
plague carrier; the brown rat (Rattus Norwegicum) is a carrier of Weil's
disease, viral haemorrhagic fever, and hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.
Nothing is yet known about the disease-carrying abilities of the mysterious
black-and-white rat.
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- Last bubonic plague death in SA in 1981:
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- These rat infestations are not limited to Gauteng: they
also regularly seen by people monitoring the thousands of inner-city
crime-cameras all over the country. Rat infestations in South Africa pose
a great health risk because bubonic plague-carrying fleas are found regularly
on black roof rats all over the country by researchers. Even so, the last
known reported outbreak which had actually killed humans had been in 1981
in Coega in the Eastern Cape province. In South Africa, bubonic plague-carrying
rats were largely exterminated during the apartheid-era but one endemic
pocket has always remained in Coega.
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- What makes the health dangers of such rat infestations
even more dreary in South Africa however is the fact that the country
also has millions of highly vulnerable, immune-deficient people: with
at least 6-million infected with the Aids virus, of whom 60% also are
co-infected with TB+HIV. This population group is now also rapidly growing
very resistant to antibiotics and dying of Extremely-Drug- Resistant Tuberculosis
(XDR-TB).
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- Baragwanath Hospital: rats munched on the corpses:
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- The worst infestation Mr Springfield has had to deal
with recently was at the Baragwanath-Hospital in Soweto. There, scores
of rat families had set up home in the linings of the mortuary's iceboxes,
he said -- adding the gruesome detail that some of the corpses' noses
and lips had already been nibbled away by the rats by the time he arrived.
Springfield said because of their long haircoats, rats always look much
bigger to people than they actually are - the ones he finds never grow
much larger than 35cm in length.
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- His company alone already gets some ten calls a day to
exterminate rats all over greater Johannesburg, from private homes, businesses
and industrial sites. "These rats don't discriminate either, I get
just as many calls from (the luxury suburb of) Sandton as I do from Soweto
(the giant black township near Johannesburg) They are all over greater
Johannesburg, in all the suburbs, in slum dwellings and mansions."
The townships and Johannesburg's central business district still have
the largest infestations of rats because of the incredibly filthy conditions
there. Rubbish and waste food never gets cleaned off the streets there,
he said.
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- Prof. Herman van der Bank of Johannesburg University's
animal- studies department said it's difficult to establish what the new
black-and-white rat might be until he has examined them. "It could
well be a hybrid." He also confirmed having noticed the large increase
in rat-infestations of late, but that there has not been a new scientific
study on this infestation as yet. He also issued a warning: "people
should not try to catch these rats themselves, as they will bite when
they feel threatened," he warned.
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- The Johannesburg health department claims that they have
now launched a campaign to make people more aware of the health dangers
posed by rats. "However it's everybody's legal duty to keep their
own properties cleaned of vermin," warned spokesman Virgil James
- who said nothing about how the many hundreds-of-thousands of homeless,
destitute people and shack dwellers could clean up these rat infestations
however. He did say that rat infestation complaints may be reported to
the city at telephone number 011-375-555.
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- Ever since 2001, warnings of a possible bubonic plague
outbreak in the greater Johannesburg area were being sounded by the Poison
Working Group of South Africa -- affiliated to the Endangered Wilflife
Trust. After these warnings, a 'plague watch' was set up in one endemic
plague area at Coega in the Eastern Cape after a massive new harbour facility
was developed there in this previous wild-life reserve.
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- Experts warn that these massive rat infestations cause
conditions which are "ripe for a return of bubonic plague",
also known as the Black Death, which destroyed a quarter of Europe's population
in the 14th century, wiping out 25 million people, and also invaded South
Africa's harbour regions during the 19th century.
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- People monitoring inner-city anti-crime closed-circuit
TV cameras often comment on the large rat infestations they can spot in
all the major cities of South Africa.
- In other parts of Africa where health systems and governments
have greatly collapsed, plague outbreaks do occur among humans but often
remain unreported. However, in June 2006, one hundred deaths resulting
from pneumonic plague were reported in the Ituri district of the eastern
Democratic Republic of the Congo at the height of the civil war in that
country. Many African countries have such poor health-care systems that
they often do not even report such outbreaks to the Centres for Disease
Control.
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- The CDC reports that Africa's plague foci are distributed
from Uganda south on the eastern side of the continent, and thourghout
southern Africa. "Severe outbreaks have occurred in recent years
in Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire, Mozambique, and Botswana, with smaller outbreaks
in other East African countries," they report.
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- The CDC recommends that epidemic plague can be best prevented
by controlling rat populations in both urban and rural areas. The plague
vaccine is no longer commercially available in the United States. It can
only be treated with antibiotics.
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- LINKS:
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- ORIGINAL AFRIKAANS-LANGUAGE STORY ON JOHANNESBURG RAT
INFESTATIONS:
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- http://www.news24.com/Rapport/Gauteng-Rapport/ 0,,752-798_2139260,00.html
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- The last bubonic-plague outbreak in South Africa was
in Coega in the Eastern Cape in 1981.The World Health organisation identifies
the Coega area in the Eastern Cape as a 'plague endemic area'-- but bubonic
plague-carrying fleas are regularly found on rodents all over South Africa
since that time.
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- http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/info.htm
- http://www.dispatch.co.za/2004/03/26/Easterncape/acoega.html
- http://www.coega.co.za/files/Coega%20News_Vol%2015.pdf
- Recommendations for rodent management in South Africa:
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- http://www.nri.org/ratzooman/docs/ RSA_rodent_management.pdfHomelessness
in the inner city of Johannesburg show large rat infestations endangering
these residents:
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- http://eau.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/10/2/223.pdfEastern
Cape "bubonic plague watch" at Coega harbour:
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- http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/info.htm
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- http://www.dispatch.co.za/2004/03/26/Easterncape/acoega.html
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- http://www.coega.co.za/files/Coega%20News_Vol%2015.pdfKwazulu-Natal
rat infestations study Cato Ridge: May 17 2006: rats there carried twol
fatal diseases easily transmitted to humans. http:// www.nri.org/ratzooman/docs/RSA_rodent_management.pdf
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- "Cathy works in the HIV/AIDS clinic. It's a frustrating,
draining, depressing job. Her clientele are predominantly young moms and
their children. Patients with HIV/AIDS in Cato Manor have so many other
things going against them as well.extreme poverty; poor nutrition; housing
ranging from none to shanty town huts to, for the lucky ones, government-provided
plaster bungalows; boyfriends/ husbands or fathers who have abandoned them;
violent crime; and other health risks (for example, there is a high rate
of TB among those with HIV/AIDS). 40% of the pregnant women in Cato Manor
have HIV/AIDS. It is estimated that about 30% of the people in this community
have HIV/AIDS, and only a small percentage of them believe that western
medicine can help them."
- http://www.sawubona.ca/RoBlog/C584549232/E20061125163036/index.html
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- Pest news: http://www.sapca.org.za/%7DUploads/Docs/PestNews.pdf
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- Bubonic plague: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubonic_plague
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- SEE CDC MAP BELOW:
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