MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

Once they can no longer deny the problem, expect Hamas or the PA to claim that “Zionists” intentionally infected Palestinians in an effort to destroy them …

By Dan Even, Haaretz – “A joint initiative by Israeli and Palestinian scientists has identified that what is thought to be a unique strain of the MRSA bacterium is becoming common in Gaza City.

Dr. Gili Regev-Yochay, a physician participating in the project and a researcher at the infectious disease unit at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, said: ‘We found that the bacterium is transmitted very rapidly in Gaza. At first we thought it came from a European volunteer and spread because of the overcrowding, but genetic markers of the Gaza bacterium make us believe that it’s a different strain. We assume it developed resistance to antibiotics in some unique process that occurred in Gaza.’

In recent years, the international medical establishment has become increasingly preoccupied with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, like MRSA. It is not enough that medical institutions take preventive measures against antibiotic-resistant bacteria, because it has become clear that they no longer attack only in the hospital setting but are also liable to spread in the general community.

The MRSA bacterium, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is liable to become very aggressive. In September 1999, four children in the Chicago area allegedly died suddenly of toxic shock after coming into contact with MRSA in the community, without having been hospitalized. The virulent strain called USA300, which has become one of the most aggressive bacteria and is known as a ‘superbug,’ has been identified in several individuals in Israel but there have been no outbreaks like those reported in the United States.” Read more.

Gaza Health Ministry denies drug-resistant bacteria rampant in the Strip – “Gaza’s Health Ministry denied a report that a drug-resistant superbug was widespread throughout the Strip, the Ma’an news agency reported Monday… According to the Ma’an report, Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedreh said there was no deadly bacterium nor virus in Gaza and the report was an Israeli attempt to destroy the Strip’s health security.” Read more.

WFJA – “(HERALD, Calif.) — Brian and Deborah Campbell’s backyard has been hit by a plague straight out of the Bible. Locusts, thousands of them, are eating through their commercial garden, destroying crops and leaving the once-thriving area nearly completely barren.

‘We don’t know what to do,’ Deborah Campbell told local television station KCRA. ‘We don’t know how to stop it. We’re just breeding them now.’

The locusts have also infested the garden of Brad Lucchese. They have decimated his produce, eating everything but the tomatoes. Lucchese told KCRA that his chickens are having a field day feasting upon the locusts. However, there aren’t nearly enough chickens to stop the thousands of bugs.

As of Wednesday, the problem is confined to a relatively small area in the town of Herald, Calif., known as ‘the grove,’ but locals fear that it will grow and spread, infesting more gardens and threatening vineyards in the area.” Source – WFJA.

Associated Press – “Health officials are investigating a mysterious and scattered outbreak of the E. coli bacteria linked to 14 illnesses and one death.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said no form of contaminated food or other cause has been identified in the illnesses, which occurred in April and May. They are spread among six states.

Three people were hospitalized. One – a child in the New Orleans area – died last week.

The outbreak strain is E. coli 0145, a dangerous but not well-known type of bacteria. The strain was fingered in a 2010 outbreak that sickened more than two dozen people in at least five states.” Source – FOX News.

By Alice G. Walton, Forbes – “In the battle between man and bacteria, we seem to be losing ground. A new World Health Organization statement cautions that around the globe, gonorrhea is becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics. Approximately 106 million people are infected with gonorrhea each year (700,000 of these cases are estimated to occur in the U.S.), and fewer are responding to the treatments that once easily killed it. The organism has indeed become a ‘superbug,’ so what do we do now?

Historically, gonorrhea was an easily treatable STD, responding to a number of antibiotics, including sulfonilamides, penicillin, tetracycline, and ciprofloxacin. However, the last resort drug cephalosporin has also become largely ineffective, according to the WHO, which means that we’re about out of options. Antibiotic-resistant cases of gonorrhea have shown up in Australia, France, Japan, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom. Resistant bugs have not been seen in the U.S., but how long it will stay this way is anyone’s guess.

The WHO’s Dr. Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan said that ‘the available data only shows the tip of the iceberg. Without adequate surveillance we won’t know the extent of resistance to gonorrhoea and without research into new antimicrobial agents, there could soon be no effective treatment for patients.’…

‘We are very concerned about recent reports of treatment failure from the last effective treatment option – the class of cephalosporin antibiotics – as there are no new therapeutic drugs in development,’ says Dr Lusti-Narasimhan. ‘If gonococcal infections become untreatable, the health implications are significant.'” Read more.

“Kinshasa — A growing cholera outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed nearly 400 lives and affected more than 19,100 people since January, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

‘The total number of cholera cases in 2012 is around 90 percent of cases reported last year. Since January 2011, 983 people have died from the outbreak affecting eight of 11 provinces of the country,’ Yvon Edoumou, OCHA spokesman, told a news conference.

Since the outbreak started, more than 40,795 cases have been reported. Edoumou said the growing epidemic had put a strain on ongoing humanitarian interventions funded mainly by a US$9.1 million grant by the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, which provides rapid response grants for humanitarian emergencies.

Experts have blamed the continued spread of cholera in the DRC on poor hygiene, lack of awareness about transmission mechanisms, limited access to protected and monitored water sources and a general lack of sanitation infrastructure.” Source – allAfrica.com.

AFP – “China faces a ‘serious epidemic’ of drug-resistant tuberculosis according to the first-ever nationwide estimate of the size of the problem there, said a new US-published study.

‘In 2007, one third of the patients with new cases of tuberculosis and one half of the patients with previously treated tuberculosis had drug-resistant disease,’ said the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Even more, the prevalence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB in new cases (5.7 percent) was nearly twice the global average, said the study.

Using World Health Organization figures as a basis for comparison, ‘China has the highest annual number of cases of MDR tuberculosis in the world — a quarter of the cases worldwide,’ it added.

‘China has a serious epidemic of drug-resistant tuberculosis.’

The data came from a survey of more than 4,600 Chinese people who were recently diagnosed or treated for TB.

Patients for the study were treated at local TB clinics, not hospitals, and the survey was conducted by the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory (NTRL) of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control.

According to an accompanying editorial by Johns Hopkins University infectious disease specialist Richard Chaisson, the growth of drug-resistant TB presents an ‘enormous challenge.’

Even more concerning was the finding that most of the 110,000 drug-resistant cases were in people newly diagnosed with the disease, suggesting that the virulent bacteria are being transmitted from person to person and not developing solely as a result of a person prematurely stopping treatment.” Read more.

Flashback: India: New, Deadlier Form of Drug Resistant Tuberculosis Strikes Mumbai and Ratnagiri – “The TB menace in India is likely to grow worse with the new, deadlier form of virus detected in Mumbai. 12 tuberculosis patients at Hinduja Hospital in Mahim, Mumbai have been found to have a virus which has been termed Totally Drug Resistant (TDR) – TB. The viruses were isolated in the fluid samples of the patients. This virus has the latest and most severe form of drug resistance in TB viruses after the Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR-TB), and Extremely Drug-Resistant (EDR-TB) varieties diagnosed a while back.” Read more.

By Daily Mail Reporter – “A little-known life-threatening illness caused by blood sucking insects has been labelled the ‘new AIDS of the Americas’ by experts.

The parasitic illness called Chagas Disease has similarities to the early spread of HIV, according to a new study.

Similar to AIDS, Chagas is difficult to detect and it can take years for symptoms to emerge, according to experts writing in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

An estimated 10 million people worldwide are infected with most sufferers in Bolivia, Mexico, Columbia and Central America, as well as approximately 30,000 people in the U.S., reported the New York Times.

The disease – once largely contained to Latin America – has spread into the U.S due to increases in travel and immigration.

Due to the severity of the illness, the amount of people infected and the ability of prevention, Chagas is considered one of the Neglected Parasitic Infections, a group of five parasitic diseases that have been targeted by CDC for public health action.

Chagas commonly affects people in poverty-stricken areas and most U.S. cases are found in immigrants.

If caught early enough, the disease can be prevented with an intense 3-month drug treatment.

However, because of the lengthy incubation period and costly medication, Chagas is often left untreated.

Also known as the American trypanosomiasis, the disease spreads easily either through blood transfusions or, less commonly, from mother to child.

All blood banks in the U.S. and Latin America screen for traces of the disease.

Most blood banks in the U.S began screening for it in 2007.” Read more.

By Rob Crilly, The Telegraph – “This year has seen a decline in cases but health officials say they have only half the funding they need to wipe out the disease in its last three remaining havens — Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Sona Bari, spokeswoman for the polio eradication programme at the World Health Organisation, said the world faced a ‘now or never’ moment.

Failing to stamp out the disease could mean recent gains are reversed and as many as 200,000 children crippled by polio in the next decade.

‘We are really on a tipping point between success and failure,’ she said.

The first polio vaccine was developed in the 1950s and a second version — given orally — is credited with reducing cases by more than 99 per cent.

However, efforts to eradicate the disease completely have stalled in recent years.

In 2011 a surge in the disease was reported across Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, with 650 cases around the world.

So far this year, India has been declared polio free and the first four months of the year have seen cases drop substantially in the three endemic countries — offering a real chance that polio could now be wiped out if health officials secure $1bn to meet their target of $2bn for the year ahead.

The issue will be discussed by ministers of health from around the world at a meeting of the World Health Assembly which begins in Geneva on Monday.

They are expected to declare a global health emergency, attracting extra funding and possibly also allowing polio-free countries to vaccinate people arriving at airport terminals from affected countries.

Each of the three countries has its own problems. In Nigeria a fragmented health care system makes it difficult to deliver vaccines, while Afghanistan and Pakistan are struggling with conflicts that put children beyond the reach of health workers.

In Pakistan, hardliners have repeatedly told parents the programmes are part of an American plot to make Muslims infertile.” Read more.