Six die as suspicions of anthrax mount in northern city (Iraq)

Mosul, Iraq Press, May 11, 2004 –Six people have died and many other are taken ill due to a disease whose symptoms doctors say resemble those caused by anthrax, according to hospital sources.

The sources, refusing to be named, said doctors in the Republican Hospital, the largest medical center in northern Iraq, suspect that the victims were exposed to anthrax.

They said a whole wing of the sprawling hospital has been cordoned off as doctors fear the disease might spread to other patients.

The sources said the doctors suspect that a patient brought to hospital two weeks ago was the cause of the disease.

Anthrax spreads quickly and the six patients were said to have caught the disease as they were being treated for other ailments in the hospital.

The patient who the doctors believe brought the anthrax was a shepherd and had already died, the sources said.

But the medical staff and support personnel have already been inoculated against anthrax, they said.

Hospital officials have declined comment and would not go into details when asked about the causes of the latest deaths.

Iraq had confirmed that it made anthrax in the 1980s along with other germ warfare agents.

The former regime produced weapons-grade dry anthrax powder which it claimed to have unilaterally destroyed.

UN weapons inspectors failed to get conclusive evidence that Iraq had scrapped its biological warfare program on its own.

After researching this story some more I found the following article also.

Anthrax-like contagious disease kill 6 in northern Iraq

BAGHDAD, 31 March — Six Iraqis died last week of a serious skin disease, which workers at the Republican hospital in Mosul, 400 kilometres north of Baghdad, said looks like the anthrax, local newspaper Azzaman reported Monday.

Workers at the hospital confirmed that highly secretive health and security procedures were taken in the burns department in the past three days.

A small girl was brought to the hospital by her father two weeks ago to treat her from what was thought a sun burn on her hand, and was discovered later to be the source of the disease.

The girl is thought to have transferred the disease, which is being kept a secret, to other people and patients in the hospital. The sources said that all workers in the hospital were injected with a vaccine against the anthrax, to prevent any infection whatsoever, which is the same vaccine given to US soldiers for protection of the chemical weapons.

The burns department in the hospital was closed and an extensive and concentrated process of sterilizing was conducted, and the officials at the hospital refrained from discussing the issue or giving any media announcements about the kind of the disease and its source.
MNA/Xinhua

from a pdf document, here's the link THE NEW LIGHT OF MYANMAR

They said a whole wing of the sprawling hospital has been cordoned off as doctors fear the disease might spread to other patients. The sources said the doctors suspect that a patient brought to hospital two weeks ago was the cause of the disease. Anthrax spreads quickly and the six patients were said to have caught the disease as they were being treated for other ailments in the hospital. The patient who the doctors believe brought the anthrax was a shepherd and had already died, the sources said.

Pulmonary anthrax is NOT contagious. It is rare since anthrax spores are too large to get into the lungs unless inhaled.

the only way it could "spread" would be if someone had a lot of weaponized anthrax on their clothes(i.e. ground into tiny pieces of antrhax and treated so not to clump)

Brucellosis is common in sheperds and mildly contageous from person to person.

Plague is VERY contagious from person to person, as is SARS. And remember Hanta virus that killed a couple of Navajo students a couple years ago?

If it's anthrax, then the entire hospital would be in jeopardy. But the incubation period is a bit longer than described.

Those unusually wet summers also precipitated many cases of Ergot poisoning from the smut which developed on the rye grains.

See St.Anthoney's Fire. History Epidemics An epidemic is a widespread disease that affects many individuals in a population. An epidemic may be restricted to one locale or may even be global (pandemic). Some examples of historical epidemics include the Black Death, or Plague, of Medieval Europe, the influenza epidemic occurring about the same time as World War I, and the current AIDS epidemic. See also : epidemiology. ..... Click the link for more information. of the disease were identified throughout history, though the references in classical writers are inconclusive. Rye, the main vector for transmitting ergotism, was not grown much around the Mediterranean. When Fuchs [1834] separated references to ergotism from erysipelas Erysipelas (or cellulitis) is a group A streptococcal infection resulting in inflammation of skin and underlying tissues. Signs and Symptoms: The skin is painful, red, and tender. Patients experience fever and chills. Lymph nodes may be swollen. The skin may blister and then scab over. Perianal cellulitis may also occur with itching and painful bowel movements. The erysipelas rash may occur on face, arms, or legs and has raised borders. The infection may recur, causing chronic swelling of extremities (lymphadenitis). ..... Click the link for more information. and other afflictions he found the earliest reference to ergotism in the Annales Xantenses for the year 857: "a Great plague of swollen blisters consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so that their limbs were loosened and fell off before death." In the Middle Ages the gangrenous poisoning was known as ignis sacer ("holy fire") or "Saint Anthony Anthony the Great (251 - 356), also known as Anthony of Egypt, Anthony of the Desert, and Anthony the Anchorite, was a leader among the Desert Fathers, who were Christian monks in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. His feast day is celebrated on January 17th in both the eastern and western churches. He was born near Heraclea in Upper Egypt. In 285, he sold all that he had, gave the proceeds to the poor, and withdrew into the desert. A number of other Christians heard of his holiness and went there to join him, forming what may have been the first monastic community. ..... Click the link for more information. 's fire", named for the 4th century hermit of Egypt. The 12th century chronicler Geoffroy du Breuil of Vigeois Geoffroy du Breuil of Vigeois was a 12th century French chronicler trained at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Martial of Limoges, the site of a great early library. Geoffroy became abbot at Vigeois (1170 -1184) where he composed his Chroniques which trace in detail some great local families (often Geoffroy's forebears and kin) while relating events happening from 994 to 1184: the fiery convulsive sickness, actually Ergotism from a fungus or ergot of wheat, the preparations for the First Crusade, reports of combats in the Holy Land, the genocide of the Cathars in the Albigensian Crusade (he used the term "Albigensians" in 1181), all the while unconsciously revealing the preoccupations and manners of the times. ..... Click the link for more information. recorded the mysterious outbreaks in the Limousin region of France, where the gangrenous form of ergotism was associated with the local Saint Martial Saint Martial was the first bishop of Limoges, France , according to a life of Saturninus, first bishop of Toulouse, which Gregory of Tours quotes in his History of the Franks. That is all that is known and it may be summed up thus: Under the Emperor Decius and of Gratus (250/51 CE), seven bishops were sent from Rome to Gaul to preach the Gospel: Gatien to Tours, Trophimus to Arles, Paul to Narbonne, Saturninus to Toulouse, Denis to Paris, Austromoine to Clermont, and Martial to Limoges. ..... Click the link for more information. as much as Saint Anthony. The blight, named from the cock's spur it forms on grasses, was identified and named by Denis Dodart reported the relation between ergotized rye and bread poisoning in a letter to the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1676 (John Ray mentioning ergot for the first time in English the next year), but "ergotism" in this modern sense was first recorded in 1853. Research of Linnda Caporael (1976) that the seven girls and women who were tried in the Salem witch trials The Salem witch trials were the result of a period of Puritan paranoia which led to the deaths of at least twenty-five people and the imprisonment of scores more. In 1692, in Salem Village, (now Danvers, Massachusetts), a number of young girls, particularly Abigail Williams and Betty Parris, accused other townsfolk of magically possessing them, and therefore of being witches or warlocks. ..... Click the link for more information. of 1692 in Massachusetts, were genuinely suffering hallucinations and other symptoms of convulsive ergotism. Similar eruptions of ergotism also occurred in Essex and Fairfield counties in Connecticut that damp and cool season, though in Connecticut no one went to the stake. Notable epidemics of ergotism, at first seen as a punishment from God, occured up into the 19th century. Fewer outbreaks have occured since then, because in developed countries rye Rye Scientific classification Kingdom: Plantae Division: Magnoliophyta Class: Liliopsida Order: Poales Family: Poaceae Genus: Secale Binomial name Secale cereale References ITIS 42089 2002-09-22 Rye (Secale cereale) is a grass grown extensively as a grain and forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe and is closely related to barley and wheat. Rye grain is used to make flour, feed and some whiskeys. Rye, alone or overseeded, is planted as a livestock forage or harvested for hay. It is highly tolerant of soil acidity. The first possible use of domestic rye comes from the site of Tell Abu Hureyra in northern Syria, in the Euphrates Valley, dating to late Epi-Palaeolithic. ..... Click the link for more information. is carefully monitored. When milled the ergot is reduced to a red powder, obvious in lighter grasses but easy to miss in dark rye flour. The last reported outbreak, which caused more than 200 cases and 4 deaths, occurred in 1951 in Pont St. Esprit, France.

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