Vietnam - Mystery Disease Stikes Miners

[sharon sanders]

Mystery disease strikes miners

(12-02-2009)

QUANG NAM – Hundreds of hired gold miners in Quang Nam Province are in panic after several of their workmates have died of symptoms that they are also suffering from.

Phan Van Dung, 35, a resident of Chau Lam Village, Binh Tri Commune, Thang Binh District, died in January after being treated for over a year in many hospitals.

Dung had difficulty breathing, was coughing up blood, could not eat and suffered rapid weight loss, symptoms many others share.

The health centre in Binh Tri Commune said it had received 35 workers intially with these symptoms. These were diagnosed with tuberculosis and treated at the centre for more than a year, but no one was showing any signs of recovery.

Blood tests, x-rays and scans showed that patients’ lungs were scarred and they were given high doses of antibiotics, but not a single person recovered, and the condition of many worsened. AIDS was suspected, but tests proved negative.

According to provincial health officials, the patients are suffering from an occupational hazard and not carrying a strange disease. They say it is a lung disease but do not know whether it is caused by a chemical or an organism.

The health ministry has asked the Quang Nam provincial health department to expedite work to determine the cause of the disease.

Golden dreams

All the patients were working for private gold prospectors in Thang Binh District, hoping to improve their living standards.

"Here, all households are poor, the land is not arable, and life is hard. Thanks to Dung going to prospect for gold, my family earned money to build a house. But that money has come in exchange for his life," says his grieving mother.

"In previous years, many people made big profits from the Dong Gia site, so young people from my village flocked to prospect for gold, digging deep trenches," says Le Van Dung, a prospector in Vinh Dong Village who worked at the Dong Tien gold mine.

Over the past few years, hundreds of people had gone down trenches 150-200 metres deep and worked in dangerous conditions, he added.

Now, many of the workers, most of them young, are very worried because they have the same symptoms as eight workers, including Dung, who have already died. — VNS




http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/s...um=01SOC120209

[Michael Coston]

Re: Vietnam - Mystery Disease Stikes Miners

I came across this earlier in the morning, and did a bit of research.

Assuming this isn't some form of XDR-TB, then environmental poisoning may be the cause.

Gold Mining, particularly in unregulated developing countries, often leaves behind an environmental disaster from Acid Mine Drainage (AMD).

This from Environmental Health Perspectives

http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2001/109-10/focus.html

AMD seeps out of fields of tailings, piles of displaced surface matter ("overburden"), and piles of rock being slowly processed for gold removal. If left unchecked, it can contaminate groundwater and entire watersheds, contributing not just acidity but heavy metals--such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury, zinc, iron, copper, aluminum, manganese, and chromium--which it releases from the ore it passes through.


Many of these are known carcinogens, or have other serious health penalties.


Given the long-term, chronic complaints of these miners, my bet is one something like this.

[Michael Coston]

Re: Vietnam - Mystery Disease Stikes Miners

Crof at Crofsblog as a follow up on this story.


Yesterday I consulted a very reliable source about this, and this morning received an answer: The disease is indeed tuberculosis, and indeed it's been reported since 2007.


It may be a particularly tough strain of TB, or the miners' working and living conditions may make it hard to treat. But it does not appear to be some H2H form of H5N1.

http://crofsblogs.typepad.com/h5n1/2009/02/vietnam-rumours.html