Roads of Mongolia’s westmost province was deserted for days after the officials announced a quarantine when a couple contracted plague. 1400 citizens of the mountains province chose to stay indoors for six days.
The town of Tsagaannuur bordering Mongolia and Russia was sealed following the deaths of a local couple who contracted the plague from eating the raw meat and organs of an infected marmot.
Mongolians believe that eating rodent’s uncooked innards, the kidney, gall bladder and stomach are “very good for health.” The husband and wife ate the organs of a large squirrel found in the region, and eating the organs without being cooked made them more susceptible to becoming sick.
The 38 year old man, who worked as a border agent, and his wife died of multiple organ failure caused by septicemic plague. Septicemic plague causes “fever, chills, extreme weakness, abdominal pain, shock, and possibly bleeding into the skin and other organs,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A person’s skin and other tissues can also turn black and die.
The couple left behind four children ranging in age from 9 months to 14 years old.
The decision to quarantine the town was put after officials worried that the husband and wife had developed pneumonic plague, which can be swiftly passed to other people through airborne droplets. If left untreated, cases of the plague have a 30 to 100 percent fatality rate, according to WHO.
118 people from the town who made last contact with the couple were put in isolation and given preventive antibiotics. After no new plague cases were reported, the quarantine was lifted on Monday.
Plague is a disease carried by small rodents, they were responsible for wiping out a third of Europe’s population nearly 700 years ago and killing millions in China, Hong Kong and nearby port cities in the 1800s.
Source : Various