Flesh Easting Disease Spreads in Syria
In Syria, a relatively new disease that eats human flesh has been spreading since 2013 due to an increase in dead bodies and the collapse of the Syrian Health Care system since the country’s civil war started. Called Leishmaniasis, the spread of this disease has been blamed on ISIS (or Daesh) for their contribution to the number of dead bodies in Syria, and their means of disposing of the corpses. As ISIS kills Syrian civilians, their bodies are dumped onto the streets, where the people walk in cities. The disease is caused by parasites carried by sand flies, which are prevalent in one of the world’s largest desert areas. Specifically, the diseases causes gaping wounds in human skin that eventually deteriorates, and if not cured, can be proven deadly.
As we learned in lecture, the spread of a disease can be attributed to special characters k and p, which characterize the contact and spread of disease. if when multiplied together, they exceed 1, then the disease will indefinitely spread, but if it is less than 1, then the disease will die out after a finite number of steps. When looking at a specific case, take the problem from our last problem set, we found that as money is spent on reducing one or both of these factors, this number can be tempered to a point below 1. With the medical scene in Syria falling to pieces, the only remaining physicians in the area remain those who are not from the area — physicians from Doctors without Borders, an international agency that aims to send doctors to areas of the world where they are needed most, are the ones treating the Syrian people. As ISIS attacks cities in Syria more, the doctors have been driven out for their own safety, and thus leaves a very small number of doctors who are able to treat the people. The article mentions that the disease spreads in areas of poverty, deforestation, and starvation, and the problem is that ISIS’s actions end up causing all 3. Until ISIS is driven out, there will be no means of reducing contact and spread of this disease, and will only worsen as ISIS kills more people and takes away the ability of the Syrian people to take care of themselves. The only remaining hope remains to be the World Health Organization (WHO), who are planning on sending more aid to Syria to reduce the spread. Hopefully they will be able to temper the disease such that the contact and spread falls below 1.
http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20151205/1031275820/flesh-eating-disease-spreads-from-dumped-bodies.html