Page "Plague (disease)" Paragraph 0

Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin.

Primarily carried by rodents ( most notably rats ) and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death and devastation it brought.

Until June 2007, plague was one of the three epidemic diseases specifically reportable to the World Health Organization ( the two other ones were cholera and yellow fever ).