New Mystery Disease in China, is this the next big outbreak?

China denied Monday that a mysterious disease that has killed at least 17 people in southwestern China was either SARS or bird flu and said it was probably caused by a bacteria spread among pigs.

The death toll from a hitherto rare disease has risen to 24 in southwest China, with more than 117 people feared infected. Chinese health officials report that the disease is caused by known bacteria from pigs, though the size and virulence of the outbreak has baffled the World Health Organization.

"It's never occurred in an outbreak this big before," WHO spokesman Bob Dietz told AFP. "We're accustomed to seeing only one or two cases. We're not accustomed to this large number of people getting infected. And we don't understand why that is."

The disease is believed to be caused by the pig bacterium Streptococcus suis. The first cases surfaced in June 2005 in two cities in China’s Sichuan province. All cases were either farmers that had butchered infected pigs or people who later handled the contaminated pork products, says the Chinese Ministry of Health. No person-to-person transmission has been reported.

High mortality rate
The first recorded human case of S. suis was in Denmark in 1968. Only 200 cases have been reported since then, excluding the current outbreak. Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, says full laboratory reports on the 76 confirmed and 41 suspected infections will help experts to understand why this outbreak has grown so large and deadly.

Originally posted by mybigunit
wow if you want to wipe out the world now would be the time. People from every country will be there. If they get sick and take it back to their homelands....thats probably why this isnt on the news.