Microscopic picture of virus | PHOTO CREDIT: Wiki Commons
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a serious concern, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), but that doesn’t mean that everyone is taking it seriously.
BIRMINGHAM, UK, May 17, 2014 — The World Health Organization (WHO) met this week to discuss the impact of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) on public health. Their conclusion was that the spread of the MERS corona-virus – which has a fatality rate of almost 30 per cent - has become more serious and urgent.
However,
at the same time, WHO said that – for now, at least – the illness does
not constitute a global health emergency. “Declaring an emergency is “a
major act” that can “raise anxieties,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the
organization’s assistant director-general for health security. “Despite
concerns about the syndrome, researchers have not found any increasing
evidence of person-to-person transmissibility,” he said.
From the CNN website:
There have been 571 confirmed cases of MERS, including 171 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. The number of countries with confirmed cases expanded to 18, with a case in the Netherlands, WHO reported Wednesday.Many of the cases are in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.Even without any official worldwide alert, Anne Schuchat, the head of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, acknowledges that “this is a relatively new virus that does have a high fatality rate,”Authorities haven’t pinned down all the details about how exactly it arose and how it spreads, though Schuchat said, “we don’t have evidence right now that this is airborne … the way the measles virus is.”“We don’t know as much as we would like so far,” the CDC official and assistant surgeon general in the U.S. Public Health Service told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin on Wednesday. “… But we’re tracking it and trying to understand.”
While
the evidence is by no means conclusive, there remains a strong
probability that the virus is transmitted to humans by camels. One
particular study carried out on Omani camels showed a 100 percent
presence of the antibodies developed specifically in response to the
MERS corona-virus. Residents of some of the Middle Eastern countries
affected, however, show little concern for the possible implications,
continuing to organise camel competitions and beauty contests in the United Arab Emirates, and in some cases, as in Saudi Arabia, defiantly posting images of themselves kissing camels on social media.
So why is this important?
Well,
for several reasons. MERS is a virus from the same family as SARS, or
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed nearly 800 people
worldwide after it first appeared in China in 2002. Like SARS, the virus
causes a lung infection, coughing and breathing difficulties, and
fever. Additionally, MERS can also lead to rapid kidney failure. There
are no vaccines or antiviral treatments for MERS. The disease kills
approximately 30 per cent of those infected.
In addition, we are now starting to see incidences of MERS infection in the United States,
from people who have recently visited Saudi Arabia. Given that Saudi
Arabia attracts millions of people from around the world every year for
the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the probability of the virus
spreading beyond the Arabian peninsula increases exponentially,
especially if there are no border controls set up to identify travelers
who may have an increased risk of infection.
Thirdly,
despite the reassurances of Dr. Keiji Fukuda of the WHO, who does not
want to declare a global health emergency in case it would “raise
anxieties”, it might just be a good idea to heed the maxim “an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Although not much is known about
this particular virus, one characteristic of viruses is that they mutate, and what could be a relatively harmless virus one day has the capacity to change into something very nasty indeed.
Last
but not least, we have the uncomfortable reality that cases of the MERS
corona-virus – at the moment – constitute a phenomenon that if not
actually exclusive to Muslim countries, is certainly predominant within
them. Given the social environment of the twin evils of political correctness and multiculturalism
that has been written about in these pages recently, it is possible
that serious efforts to prevent a worldwide pandemic could be hindered
by cries of “Islamophobia” and “racism” from those on the political
spectrum blinded by their own self-righteousness to the point where they
become willing to place thousands, if not millions of lives at risk. http://www.brennerbrief.com/world-health-organization-mers-transmission-now-serious-concern/
