FOR the second time, antibiotic resistant plague bacteria have been found in
Madagascar. This time, the bacteria are resistant to streptomycin, the
antibiotic usually given to treat it, Elisabeth Carniel and her colleagues at
the Pasteur Institutes in Paris and Antananarivo, Madagascar, report in the
latest edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases. The team fears the
discovery means plague is acquiring many such genes worldwide, and warns of “a
critical public health problem”.
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