{"id":35888,"date":"2025-10-27T21:13:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T22:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=35888"},"modified":"2025-10-28T00:23:25","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T00:23:25","slug":"diphtheria-a-once-vanquished-killer-of-children-is-resurgent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=35888","title":{"rendered":"Diphtheria, a Once Vanquished Killer of Children, Is Resurgent"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Somali hospital ward packed with gasping children shows how war, climate and mistrust of vaccines is fueling the disease\u2019s return.<\/p>\n

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Qurraisha Mukhtar\u2019s two youngest children fell sick in early September, with a fever, cough and short gasping breaths. Their throats turned white, their necks swelled. She asked a healer in the neighborhood for a remedy, but 1-year-old Salman\u2019s struggle for air grew much worse one night and he died. The next day, Hassan, 2, began to choke, and he died, too.<\/p>\n

Ms. Mukhtar, who lives with her family in a stick-and-tin shack on the edge of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, could not sit and grieve, because two more of her children began to show signs of the same illness. She and her husband appealed to friends and relatives and scraped together the money to take them to a hospital in a three-wheeled taxi.<\/p>\n

At Demartino Hospital in the center of the city, she was directed to a new building erected during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. These days, it has been repurposed to respond to an old foe: diphtheria, a horrific and vaccine-preventable disease, which is infecting thousands of children and some adults too.<\/p>\n

Diphtheria is caused by bacteria that produce a powerful toxin that kills cells, usually in the throat and tonsils, creating a thick, gray membrane of dead tissue that can grow large enough to block the airway and cause suffocation. It is particularly dangerous in young children with small airways. If caught early, it can be treated effectively with antibiotics, but if not, cases can swiftly turn fatal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is among the diseases that were relics of prevaccine days but have resurged in recent years, with mass displacement driven by climate change and war. The disruptions in routine immunization that came with Covid and its stress on global health systems, and the rise in vaccine hesitancy, have fueled their spread.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Qureisha Mukhtar sits with one of her surviving children in the diphtheria ward.<\/span>Brian Otieno for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A Somali hospital ward packed with gasping children shows how war, climate and mistrust of vaccines is fueling the disease\u2019s return.Qurraisha Mukhtar\u2019s two youngest children fell sick in early September, with a fever, cough and short gasping breaths. Their throats turned white, their necks swelled. She asked a healer in the neighborhood for a remedy, but 1-year-old Salman\u2019s struggle for air grew much worse one night and he died. The next day, Hassan, 2, began to choke, and he died, too.Ms. Mukhtar, who lives with her family in a stick-and-tin shack on the edge of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, could not sit and grieve, because two more of her children began to show signs of the same illness. She and her husband appealed to friends and relatives and scraped together the money to take them to a hospital in a three-wheeled taxi.At Demartino Hospital in the center of the city, she was directed to a new building erected during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. These days, it has been repurposed to respond to an old foe: diphtheria, a horrific and vaccine-preventable disease, which is infecting thousands of children and some adults too.Diphtheria is caused by bacteria that produce a powerful toxin that kills cells, usually in the throat and tonsils, creating a thick, gray membrane of dead tissue that can grow large enough to block the airway and cause suffocation. It is particularly dangerous in young children with small airways. If caught early, it can be treated effectively with antibiotics, but if not, cases can swiftly turn fatal.It is among the diseases that were relics of prevaccine days but have resurged in recent years, with mass displacement driven by climate change and war. The disruptions in routine immunization that came with Covid and its stress on global health systems, and the rise in vaccine hesitancy, have fueled their spread.Qureisha Mukhtar sits with one of her surviving children in the diphtheria ward.Brian Otieno for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35890,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35888"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35891,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35888\/revisions\/35891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}