NEW DELHI: After a fourth person died of a mysterious illness that has caused panic in Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal, medical experts said the disease could be plague.

“Clinically it looks like plague but we are awaiting final identification through molecular characterisation according to World Health Organisation (WHO) criteria,” Dr S.K. Sharma, director of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS) at Chandigarh city, said on Monday.

The National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in New Delhi, which has been tasked with the job of identifying the disease that broke out last week in the Rhoru district of Himachal Pradesh, a known focal point for plague, has not issued its report.

The latest victim, a woman, is one of nine people currently admitted at the PGIMS, and undergoing treatment. Chandigarh, the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana states, is the nearest major city with specialist facilities for people in Himachal Pradesh.

Earlier, union minister for health, C. P. Thakur, himself a qualified doctor, claimed that the disease was under control but admitted that it had “symptoms similar to pneumonic plague”. Thakur will have to make an official statement on this soon, and if the disease is in fact plague, his pronouncement is expected to have an impact on industries like tourism.

The symptoms of pneumonic plague, which is spread through the air and therefore considered highly contagious, includes rapid onset of fever, chills, headaches, malaise, prostration and nausea. Victims and doctors treating them are required to wear surgical masks to prevent contagion. Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis, which is carried by the rat flea, also manifests as the bubonic plague in which the lymph glands in the armpits, groin and neck swell, and also as septicaemic plague.

The mysterious disease has so far claimed four lives — two in Himachal Pradesh and two in Uttaranchal. In all, 15 people are now undergoing treatment for plague, including nine admitted at the PGIMS. Tablets of tetracycline, the drug of choice against plague, are being distributed in Rhoru and nearby Jhubal village.

News reports from the two remote Himalayan villages, about a 100kms east of Shimla,, spoke of hundreds of panic-stricken people flocking around public health centres and small medical facilities demanding tetracycline tablets. The Hindu newspaper on Monday cited unnamed public health experts who said Himachal Pradesh, a known focal point for plague, had dismantled a surveillance system for the disease some ten years ago for lack of funds. —Dawn/InterPress Service.