Officials in the Czech Republic proclaimed a country-wide epidemic with two of every 100 people hit by a flu virus. Schools were closed in some regions and hospital visits barred. Officials said inoculations had proved ineffective as more and more people were suffering from respiratory problems. Similar problems were reported in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia, where an epidemiologist admitted that one in three people who underwent inoculation might still catch flu. The illness, a result of contamination from a toxic form of mercury called methyl mercury, attacks the immune system and causes deformities in children.
Victims suffer uncontrollable shaking and muscle wasting.
Researchers believe millions of miners in Brazil, who use mercury to purify gold, release about 250 tons of the metal into the Amazon region each year, contaminating rivers and fish. However, Donna Mergler of the University of Quebec, who also studied the Brazilian victims, thinks deforestation is the problem. The fear is that if we got a rat from West Nile with its fleas, and it infects those other rats in Kampala, there can be an epidemic. At least four million rats live in the hilly East African city, compared to a human population estimated at around one million, the paper quoted health officials as saying. The plague virus is carried by fleas on rats.