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Posted
on 28-Oct-01 03:43 AM
KARACHI: The bio-terror campaign spooking the US has spread to Pakistan with a local man contracting anthrax, the doctor treating him here said on Saturday.
The man was admitted to the private Aga Khan hospital this week after a letter containing the potentially deadly disease was delivered to the foreign bank he worked at, the doctor said.
His condition was not life-threatening, added the doctor, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He definitely will not die. His condition is okay. He will be out in a week or so," he said.
The anthrax case is the first in Pakistan linked to suspicious mail following a series of similar apparent biological weapon attacks in the US.
Aga Khan hospital officials in Karachi this week confirmed it had received three possible anthrax samples delivered in letters to at least two foreign banks in Karachi.
The doctor said that the man he was treating was the only person at the hospital to have contracted the disease.
He did not name the bank but said that it was a branch of a major international financial institution located in the business district of southern Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city and commercial hub.
Private mail operators in Karachi this week said that security measures had been stepped up following the anthrax scares.
"We have been very strict in our mail service and are taking extra measures after reports of anthrax cases in the US," an official from TCS courier service, Shafiq Ahmed, said.
Fourteen people in the US have contracted the disease through either inhalation or the less serious manifestation, skin anthrax, after spores were sent in the mail.
Authorities have not so far managed to link the anthrax attacks with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, which Washington believes is behind attacks on the Pentagon and New York on September 11, but have not ruled out such a link.
Three people, a Florida journalist and two Washington postal workers, have died from the disease.
In the latest scares, three offices in the Longworth House building of the US Congress tested positive for traces of anthrax, Capitol Police spokesman Dan Nichols announced late on Friday.
The offices belong to John Baldacci, a Democrat from Maine, Rush Holt, a Democrat from New Jersey and Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, according to the spokesman.
Anthrax spores were also found in an air filter at an off-site mail handling facility serving the US Supreme Court.
Traces of anthrax were also found at a mail facility outside Washington used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The escalation in anthrax scares came as US President George W. Bush signed into law sweeping anti-terrorism legislation that expands police and federal surveillance powers, tightens immigration policy and targets money launderers.
( AFP )
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