Photo: AP / Mark Schiefelbein
The United States issued a health alert for U.S. citizens in China on Wednesday after it announced a consulate employee was suffering from a mild traumatic brain injury, similar to a recent spate of mysterious maladies which hit U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba last year, according to The Guardian.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. consular employee was stationed in Guangzhou and suffered symptoms "very similar and entirely consistent with the medical indications of the Americans working in Havana."
Pompeo was speaking to a congressional committee to say that a medical team was en route to southern China and authorities were already “working to figure out what took place both in Havana and Guangzhou."
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said a medical team would arrive early next week in Guangzhou "to conduct baseline medical evaluations of all consulate Guangzhou employees who request it."
“The department is taking this incident very seriously and is working to determine the cause and impact of the incident,” said a US embassy spokeswoman Jinnie Lee. “The Chinese government has assured us they are also investigating and taking appropriate measures.”
The embassy reported no other employees reported experiencing similar symptoms anywhere else in China within or external to the diplomatic community.
The employee claimed to have "subtle and vague, but abnormal" sensations of sound and pressure" from the end of 2017 through April 2018 and had been sent to the U.S. for medical evaluation.
On May 18, Nauert said the U.S. Embassy in Beijing “learned that the clinical findings of this evaluation were similar to what might be seen in a patient with a head concussion or mild traumatic brain injury," which prompted the travel warning released today.
The embassy told any Americans having heard “unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises” to move away from the location in order to seek medical help and alert U.S. officials.
Doctors evaluated more than 20 U.S. and Canadian government employees in Cuba and discovered they were experiencing ear-ringing and hearing loss after reporting loud sounds.
The symptoms included those along with dizziness, headaches, and nausea in 10 out of 27 Canadian personnel and family members that underwent medical testing, according to Reuters.
Canadian and Americal medical specialists raised concern that the symptoms could be the result of a type of acquired brain injury, though they have not ruled out the possibility of a sonic attack or mass psychosomatic events.
The U.S. withdrew embassy staff from Cuba after the attacks last year and have since advised Americans not to visit the country.
The U.S. clashed with China earlier in May after Chinese nationals had allegedly pointed military-grade lasers at a U.S. military aircraft outside Djibouti, where both countries have military bases.
Two pilots suffered from eye injuries but China has denied the accusations.
-WN.com, Maureen Foody
