Eight people have died of anthrax infection from using suspected contaminated heroin, European health authorities said on Saturday, and one expert advised users to stop taking the narcotic immediately.
Authorities said they believed a batch of heroin is circulating in Europe that is contaminated with anthrax, a fairly common bacteria whose spores can be used as a biological weapon.
“I would urge all drug users to stop using heroin immediately and contact local drug services for support,” said Colin Ramsay, a consultant epidemiologist in Scotland.
A total of 15 heroin users in Scotland have been found to have anthrax infection since December. Seven of them have died. The eighth victim was a 42-year-old man in Germany who died in the middle of last month after injecting drugs, authorities said.
“It is now suspected that heroin with infectious anthrax spores [and possibly other psychoactive substances that can be injected] is in circulation in Europe,” the health ministry in Berlin said in a statement.
Anthrax infection occurs most often in wild and domestic animals in Asia, Africa and parts of Europe. Humans are rarely infected but touching contaminated hides or hair can cause skin lesions. If the bacillus is inhaled, it can take hold quickly and by the time symptoms show up, it usually is too late to be treated.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors health in the EU, said on its Web site that further anthrax cases were possible.
“The occurrence of 15 confirmed cases, including eight deaths in a five-week period is unusual and unexpected,” it said.
“Considering the complex international distribution chain of heroin, and the clustering in time of cases in Scotland and Germany, the exposure to a contaminated batch of heroin distributed in several EU member states is possible,” the ECDC said.
England’s chief medical officer Liam Donaldson issued an alert last week to doctors and hospital emergency rooms to be on the look out for anthrax poisoning.
The ECDC said investigations “strongly” suggested that all the cases had been infected by a common source, but it was unlikely to have been deliberately contaminated.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened