Biosecurity

An old disease rears its ugly head

A catastrophic outbreak of Aleppo boil is underway in the Middle East, according to scientists collating data and information from refugee camps and conflict zones in the region.

The disease, properly known as cutaneous leishmaniasis, is caused by a parasite in the blood stream and transmitted through the bite of the sand fly. It provokes disfiguring lesions on the body, which are liable to secondary infection. 

Hundreds of thousands of people across the Middle East region are now affected by cutaneous leishmaniasis, which until recently was contained to areas around Aleppo and Damascus in Syria. 

The figures, which are published yesterday in a PLOSeditorial, have spiked with the advent of war. 

“The numbers are looking very bad and there’s no access to intra lesional antimony compounds …We're seeing lots of diseases, including leishmaniasis… in these conflict zones and we need to ring fence them or risk another situation like Ebola out of the conflict zones in West Africa in 2014,” says Peter Hotez, dean of the US National School of Tropical Medicine, US Science Envoy to the Middle East, and lead author of the PLOS editorial.