Plague outbreak kills five in Madagascar

Five people have been killed by the pneumonic plague in Madagascar, a country where the more common bubonic form of the disease remains endemic.

An outbreak of the pneumonic plague has killed five people in Madagascar, according to a World Health Organisation representative.

While known to many as an illness from the Middle Ages that devastated Europe, the plague - in its bubonic form - is still endemic to countries including Madagascar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Peru.

In Madagascar, an island off Africa's southeast coast, about 600 cases of plague are reported every year, most of them bubonic, which is transmitted when a person comes in contact with infected fluid or tissue.

The much rarer pneumonic strain of the disease is fatal unless treated within 24 hours.

Pneumonic plague is spread from person to person by droplets in the air and those infected experience flu-like symptoms.

Local newspaper L'Express reported that anxious citizens had already bought up all the supplies of plague antibiotics in the capital Antananarivo.