WHO gets SOS call by USA and Mexico over cosmetic surgery-linked fungal outbreak |Oneindia News

US and Mexican authorities have urged the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency over a fungal outbreak linked to cosmetic operations in Mexico.

The WHO declares a public health emergency when a disease spreads between countries and a co-ordinated international response may be required to bring it under control.

The US CDC has said that two people who got surgeries involving epidural anaesthesia have died of fungal meningitis lately.

The CDC has said that it has already identified 25 people in the US with "suspected" or "probable" cases of fungal meningitis.

The CDC and the Texas Department of State Health Services had reported last week that five residents of Texas had become ill after having surgery either at the River Side Surgical Center or Clinica K-3 in Matamoros.

In the wake of this, both cosmetic clinics in the Mexican city of Matamoros have been shut.

The procedures involved an epidural… an anesthetic injected into the area around the spinal column.

Last October, a batch of a local anaesthetic commonly used for operations such as Caesarean births was found to have been infected by the same fungus, leading to the death of 39 people in the Mexican state of Durango.

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