URGENT URGENT URGENT
East Coast Alerts
By Mel Neale
June 21, 2006

Various sources are reporting an outbreak of Malaria on Great Exuma in the Bahamas. It is being recommended that people going there or who have recently been there should take specific cautions.

Go to: http://www.cdc.gov/travel/other/2006/malaria_bahamas.htm for information from the CDC including the following quote taken there from:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently received official reports of 14 confirmed malaria cases in Great Exuma, Bahamas, an area where malaria transmission does not normally occur and for which antimalarial drugs have not previously been recommended. Thirteen cases occurred in residents of the Bahamas, and an additional malaria infection was confirmed in a U.S. citizen who traveled to Great Exuma in early May 2006. All these confirmed infections were caused by Plasmodium falciparum. Most of the patients reported no recent travel to malaria-endemic areas, but some of the Bahamas residents may have recently traveled from Haiti, where P. falciparum is endemic.

Additional information follows on that site.

Also see http://news.caribseek.com/Bahamas/article_34820.shtml as well as other sources of information.

Copyright 2004-2008 Tom Neale