BANGUED, Abra - Health officials confirmed on Saturday that 41 people have been infected with anthrax, a deadly bacterial disease notoriously used in biological warfare, after they ate the meat from two carabaos that had died from sickness in Villaviciosa town. Dr. Myrna Cabotaje, director of the Center for Health Development (CHD) in Cordillera, said the victims were lucky that none of them died. Cabotaje said the situation has been put under control after antibiotics were immediately distributed to the residents to mitigate the effects of the anthrax disease. Based on the report from the National Epidemiology and Surveillance Center, which conducted a field-based investigation in the town after the reported anthrax outbreak, there were 41 confirmed cases. Most of the patients were men but all of them had skin lesions. Cabotaje explained that a suspected anthrax case would experience pruritic (itchy) skin lesions from which lesion progressed from papule (raised portion of skin) to vesicle (skin lesion with fluid) then to a black eschar and may be accompanied by edema (swelling) or abdominal pain, vomiting, dyspnea (difficulty in breathing) and fever. Research Institute of Tropical Medicine (RITM) conducted the laboratory tests that confirmed two samples from swabbed lesions were positive for bacillus anthracis or anthrax. Cabotaje said the common denominator among the patients were that they all ate meat from butchered carabaos that died of unknown causes. Appropriate samples from the hides of the dead carabaos were sent to the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) for analysis and results of the tests are still being awaited for the proper guidance of concerned agencies.
