That is as frozen tundra of Siberia melts and releases the virus from the corpses of people, who died in a major epidemic about 120 years ago.
Smallpox is a disease caused by the Variola major virus. Some experts say that over the centuries, it has killed more people than all other infectious diseases combined.
The disease was once one of the most feared in the world. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), up to 30 per cent of people who caught smallpox would die after experiencing symptoms including a high fever and the characteristic pus-filled spots.
The pores of potentially fatal anthrax from dead people and reindeer that had been entombed in the permafrost are already thought to have infected 24 patients currently in hospital in Salekhard near Russia’s north coast, reports the independent uk. But health experts told the Siberian Times this was a warning sign that there could be worse to come.
Boris Kershengolts, of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences, said: “Back in the 1890s, there occurred a major epidemic of smallpox.
There was a town where up to 40 per cent of the population died. Naturally, the bodies were buried under the upper layer of permafrost soil, on the bank of the Kolyma River.
“Now, a little more than 100 years later, Kolyma’s floodwaters have started eroding the banks.”
The melting of the permafrost has speeded up this erosion process.
After anthrax spores have been found in Yamal peninsula near Salekhard, experts from the Novosibirsk- based Virology and Biotechnology Centre have been testing for other diseases. They found corpses that bore sores that look like the marks left by smallpox. While the experts – dressed in protective clothing because of the risks – did not find the virus itself, they did detect fragments of its DNA. Story By JOHNSON OKPUSA OBASI
