Rare Congo fever kills three people

Three people have died in Pakistan of what health authorities suspect is a rare incidence of the highly contagious Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF). Prof Abbas of the Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, told IRIN that the three had died in the past week, including a woman doctor who caught the virus while treating a female patient. "We have sent blood samples to South Africa," he said, and a report was expected within a week to 10 days. "There have been no more cases, though all the doctors and other staff who came across the victims are being given medicines and kept in isolation," he added. CCHF is transmitted by eating and/or handling sheep and goats carrying ticks, but is relatively rare in humans. However, there were some cases recorded in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1998, and again in Pakistan in May last year. Doctors say the disease has been present in the country for a much longer period. It killed a doctor in Rawalpindi in 1974. The virus damages arteries, veins and other blood vessels, and causes external bleeding from parts of the body, which eventually leads to death. There were a total of 40 CCHF cases in Pakistan between May and September last year, resulting in 11 deaths. All the cases occurred in the southwestern Baluchistan Province. Health officials said precautionary measures had been taken at the two main hospitals, respectively in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, where the patients were treated. A World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman, Shahzad Khan, told IRIN that the world health body had already provided some technical help and training in the disease to Pakistani doctors. "We are in touch with the health ministry and the NIH [National Institute of Health] on this," he said. The WHO in collaboration with the local authorities carried out a health-awareness campaign in Loralai in Baluchistan last year after a man died there of the same disease, and has been coordinating closely with the livestock ministry. The name Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever derives from its original detection in the Crimea in 1944, when Russian soldiers died of it, and a subsequent outbreak in the Congo in 1956. The virus causing it belongs to the same family of acute haemorrhagic fevers as that causing the deadly Ebola fever in parts of Africa.