The Health Ministry of Nicaragua on Thursday raised alarm over the outbreak of leptospirosis, a deadly illness prevailing in tropical countries and can be transmitted to human beings by a bacteria present in rat urine.

According to Health Minister Maritza Cuan, 10 people were already killed and 2,700 more cases were reported in some regions of this Central American country

On Thursday, health officials reported that two heart transplant patients contracted a parasitic tropical disease before they died earlier this year.

The two men mark the fifth time that patients have contracted the disease while receiving a transplant

The Guatemalan government has come under fire for downplaying the flood crisis and its slow response to deadly landslides that buried entire villages and paralyzed the small Central American country's transport network after Hurricane Stan passed through

The first reported strain of bird flu virus has been confirmed on a poultry farm in Mitsukaido, Ibaraki Prefecture.

Local media reported that officials from the agriculture ministry and Ibaraki prefectural government stated the bird flu virus is far less virulent than the avian flu virus that infected farms last year, and only a small percentage of chickens infected in Mitsukaido have died