Adelaide Miarinjara, a Madagascar native, is a medical entomologist and postdoctoral fellow at Emory University. But right now, she’s back home performing crucial research on one of the deadliest diseases in history — the bubonic plague. Once known as the Black Death, the bubonic plague killed tens of millions — including over one third of Europe’s population at the time — during the mid 14th century. While it has largely been quelled in most of the world, in Madagascar, the plague is still a real threat.
“As a microbiologist, Adelaide is extremely creative,” Thomas Gillespie, Emory professor of environmental sciences, told Emory University News. “She’s developed whole new protocols for studying fleas that are allowing her to zero in on unanswered questions.”
Miarinjara has completed extensive research on the plague and its flea hosts within the labs of the Pasteur Institute. In Madagascar, the plague regularly returns as infected fleas bite the local fauna, spreading the disease across the country’s rural rice-growing regions.
“Plague outbreaks in Madagascar are associated with agriculture, degraded forests and the black rat — an invasive species that is present in people’s homes,” Miarinjara told Emory University.
When an outbreak occurs, Miarinjara enters the field to collect biological specimens from fleas, rats and people.
“It’s very delicate to approach people with a suspected case of plague in their family,” she said. “People associate plague with a lack of hygiene so sometimes they feel ashamed. Some people even believe that plague is a curse.”
Miarinjara first joined Emory University in 2021 to further her research, which is aimed at shaping a new approach to plague studies.
“Understanding people’s behavior is out of the scope of entomology, but it’s an important piece of the puzzle of plague in Madagascar,” Miarinjara said. “There are so many things that we don’t know about plague transmission,” she adds. “The more we learn, the more we can help people to avoid it.”
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