People caught and died from plague long before it caused major epidemics like the Black Death in the middle ages. Could what scientists call cultural resistance be what kept the disease under control?
Children at a school in Antananarivo, Madagascar, during a plague outbreak, Oct. 3, 2017.
AP Photo/Alexander Joe, File
Where do plague bacteria go between outbreaks? Research demonstrates that they can survive and replicate inside amoebae that are widely present in soil and water worldwide.
Uncollected rubbish provides food and shelter for rodents which can spread plague if they pick up the bacteria.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
It’s a deadly bacterium that can spread like wildfire. New research suggests Yersinia pestis first developed its ability to cause lung infection and then evolved to be highly infectious.
A model of the bubonic plague bacterium, which is known as Yersina pestis.
Tim Evanson/Flcikr
Cases of plague have been reported in the Chinese city of Yumen, where a man has died of the disease. Control measures taken by the authorities include travel restrictions in and out of the city, and 151…
Principal Pathologist, Centre for Emerging, Zoonotic and Parasitic Diseases, National Institute for Communicable Diseases and Wits Research Institute for Malaria, University of the Witwatersrand