Africa's expanding farms attract more plague-infested rats

By Chris Arsenault ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Converting wilderness areas into farmland in East Africa may be increasing the risk of disease epidemics, as rodents crawling with plague-carrying fleas are drawn to the harvested food. In northern Tanzania, crop lands have expanded by 70 percent over the last few decades and the number of plague-carrying rodents in these corn growing lands has nearly doubled compared with neighboring wilderness areas, said the study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene on Monday. Scientists linked an increase in corn fields – necessary to feed an expanding population – to a 20-fold rise in the population of African rats in northern Tanzania, which transmit deadly diseases to humans, including Lassa fever and plague.



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