Deadly 4 Striped Mice of 1982: Coega Bubonic Plague

Plagues, murder, and theft – topics that you would dread discussing with a toddler. However, the majority of nursery rhymes we grew up reciting have a deeper meaning behind them.

“One for Jack and one for Jim and one for little mouses” is a playful nursery rhyme recited by children titled Ring Around the Rosie, one of the interpretations around this nursery rhyme arose from the emergence of the bubonic plague.

The first recorded case of the plague was in China in 224 B.C.E, but the most noteworthy of its kind was in Europe in the mid-fourteenth century where over 1352,25 Million lives were lost.

The first symptoms of this plague appeared within days after infection, these include fever, a white tongue, rapid pulse, and bleeding under the skin followed by dark ringed red spots appearing on the skin because of flea bites.

The plague affects both humans and rodents with rodents playing a major role in conveying it rapidly into the population. Furthermore, there are three ways in which the plague can manifest in humans, bubonic plague, septicemia plague, and pneumonic plague all these three ways are deadly. The most recent human plague with an outbreak occurring in 1982 was in South Africa.

Although the plague dies down in winter and returns in spring, The plague hit South Africa in March 1982 which was during the fall. The outbreak occurred at a Catholic missionary settlement 23,5kms from the center of Gqeberha in what is now the Coega Industrial Development Zone.

Rodents that were trapped and tested for antibodies revealed that there was a population increase of four striped rodents named Rhabdomys pumilio and the Vlei rat, furthermore, at least one case was passed through an infected domestic cat. This outbreak had 13 cases and one death from those cases. With the possibility of the disease spreading, 18 homes were quarantined

Currently, In South Africa, there are two national plague surveillances sites one in the Nelson Mandela Bay, Eastern Cape, and another in the city of Johannesburg in the Gauteng province

Video: Deadly 4 Stripped mouses of 1982: Coega Bubonic Plaque

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