HEALTH-CARIBBEAN: Anthrax Scare Hits Region

By Zadie Neufville Reprint | | Print |

Zadie Neufville

KINGSTON, Oct 23 2001 (IPS) - Health authorities are bracing for a possible outbreak of anthrax in the Caribbean, where postal workers have begun to encounter envelopes containing or covered with a white powder.

The Trinidad-based Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC) has tested 15 such envelopes and found no trace of anthrax. Similar tests have confirmed the presence of anthrax in mail handled by U.S. postal workers, fueling fears that this region is particularly vulnerable because of its proximity and exposure to the United States through travel, trade, and mail.

“It’s only a matter of time before the germ reaches” Jamaica and its neighbours, says health worker Ann-Marie Morris.

Morris and other officials in the region say they fear the disease itself less than they do its potential to ignite panic.

C. James Hospedales, CAREC’s head, called last week for calm in Trinidad and Tobago, where some postal workers were frantic with worry after a colleague reported coming in contact with an envelope that leaked white powder. Similar scares have been reported elsewhere, including Barbados, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico.

Hospedales has since moved to reassure officials and the public region-wide that Caribbean public health systems have sufficient laboratory facilities and supplies of antibiotics to watch for and treat any infections that may occur.

Labs have been issued instructions on how to test for the germ and guidelines for handling suspicious packages and suspected cases of infection have been circulated widely and posted on CAREC’s web site.

Anthrax is listed as a ‘Class 1 notifiable disease’, meaning that doctors are required to report to the health and security authorities any case involving symptoms like those of the disease.

Morris says she is confident in the stringency of ‘Class 1’ monitoring and that, in any event, anthrax cannot be passed from one person to the next.

At least five infections and one death have been confirmed in the United States, however, so postal workers have been issued gloves and masks in Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Caribbean response to the anthrax scare also stems, in part, from a ‘Suspicious Mail Alert’ issued by the United States Postal Service.

“We are taking preventative action to see that none of our employees is affected,” says Guyana Postmaster General Edward Noble.

Blossom O’Mealy-Nelson, who heads Jamaica’s postal service, expresses worry that panic could disrupt mail operations already slowed by package handling procedures augmented in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks on the United States.

The Jamaican health ministry, in a statement, has sought to assure citizens that “although anthrax is an infectious disease, it is not readily communicable from one person to another.”

Transmission between species is more of a concern, so the Ministry of Agriculture has added anthrax to its watch list, which includes Mad Cow disease and Foot and Mouth disease, says veterinary service chief George Grant. The only outbreak of anthrax in Jamaica involved cattle and was recorded in 1968.

Worldwide, there are between 2,000 and 5,000 cases of anthrax per year, about five of them in the United States, according to CAREC. The ‘bacillus anthracis’ bacterium is found in animals and can infect people through inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact.

Although the initial response to the current disease scare has been primarily medical, officials and observers in a number of countries also point to what they call the worrisome inadequacy of border controls – even with U.S. and British support in patrolling regional waters, mainly for purposes of narcotics interdiction.

The Bahamas’ 185,200 square kilometres of territory is scattered over more than 700 islands and cays, making security a daunting logistical and financial challenge. Jamaica’s Coast Guard has one vessel to patrol the island’s 1,022 kilometres of coastline.