Posted on 04/28/2003 10:28:14 AM PDT by Shermy
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - A crew member of an Egyptian merchant ship has died in northern Brazil, almost certainly from anthrax, after opening a suitcase suspected of containing the substance which he was taking to Canada.
A spokesman for Brazilian federal police in the Amazon state of Para said on Monday an autopsy of the Egyptian man, whom he named as Ibrahim Saved Soliman Ibrahim, showed that he had died after vomiting, internal bleeding and multiple organ failure.
"He was the victim of anthrax," said Castro, adding that police were 90 percent certain that Ibrahim had died of anthrax.
Ibrahim died in the hotel were he was staying on April 11. Several health workers who found his body were taken to a hospital after becoming ill but are now out of danger.
Ibrahim had traveled to Brazil from Cairo to join his ship, the Wabi Alaras, which loaded bauxite in the Amazon to take to Canada.
"We imagine that this is about bioterrorism and Brazil was just used as a point of transfer," said Castro.
Ibrahim died before his ship sailed to Canada, where it was quarantined by authorities last week.
Canada was alerted about the ship through Interpol.
Castro said Ibrahim had been given the suitcase in Cairo by an unidentified person and was due to deliver it to somebody in Canada. But he doubted Ibrahim knew what the content of the bag was otherwise he most likely would not have opened it.
"He opened it because he was curious," Castro said.
After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, five people died in still-unsolved anthrax mailings.
Here we have all sorts of bits and pieces from the world, on the frontline of reporting.
MSNBC, Fox, etc. repeating the mistake of naming the ship ""Wabi Albas"
Anthrax is so passe
J. H. C. - we're all going to die!
Q: So what's the big deal then?A: Well SARS is one of the most serious infectious diseases ever and it's spreading round the world up to 10 times faster than the last serious infectious disease. Many people have caught it already. Hundreds have died and billions more are set to follow.
Q: How is it transmitted?
A: By Canadians and the tabloid media. Exposure to either means at best uninformed blind panic, at worst a miserable death in an NHS hospital corridor.
Yep, the movie version of Tom Clancy's The Sum of all Fears clearly showed that the most likely perpetrators of terrorism are crazy white people.
If you want to believe that this Egyptian sailor traveling on a ship carrying bauxite died from exposure to infected animals simply because he was from a third-world country, be my guest, but there is a low incidence of inhalation anthrax infection even among those who work with sheepskins in third-world countries, and intestinal anthrax is even rarer.
BTW, cattle and sheep are not routinely vaccinated against anthrax in many areas of this country unless there is a nearby outbreak. It's not cost-effective due to the sporadic nature of the disease.
Do a search on the WHO website for 'Anthrax' come back and we'll 'talk' ...
_Jim I feel pretty good about this now. We have turned the corner in Hong Kong, Toronto, Tiawan, Vietnam, and hopefully Singapore (little news from there). China does not have control of this but they are willing to kill their own residents for minor infractions, so they will ruthlessly crack down on this now that they realize it is a threat to China, not just its residents.
The thing that scares me about this disease is one Chinese doctor coughing in front of an elevator infected the index cases for Hong Kong, Vietnam, Toronto, and Singapore (I believe Singapore I will have to find and reread). I just don't want that out in America for my wife or child to catch. It looks like it may not get here.
I haven't heard from them since shortly after they were moved into Y2K Internment Camps several years back ...
You ought to frame that one. It was one of the wittiest I have seen in years.
He seems to have been the 'super-spreader' who treated something like 300 cases (see my tagline for details) in Guangdong province THEN travelled to China ...
Can you imagine being subjected to 300 slightly different mutations THEN leaving the country to infect another? I think that's what did it.
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