Kesher Talk

Suicide Hepatitis bombers? Israeli doctors have discovered a gruesome new way to catch hepatitis and possibly other blood-borne diseases - from the flying bone fragments of suicide bombers. They call it "the first report of human bone fragments acting as foreign bodies in a blast injury."

"As a result of that case, all survivors of these attacks in Israel are now vaccinated for hepatitis B," say the doctors. They think embedded bone fragments should routinely be tested for diseases that might spread this way.

In theory, those could include four kinds of hepatitis, dengue fever, syphilis, CJD and possibly malaria.

The biggest fear is HIV: "these test kits are designed for blood. It is very hard to test bone," the doctors say, especially for a fragile virus like HIV. Only 50 cases of HIV/AIDS have been reported in the West Bank and Gaza, according to a 2000 report from the Palestinian National Authority Ministry of Health. But the true extent of infection is difficult to assess.

posted by Howard @ 7/25/2002 09:45:15 AM