Congo fever: Prof optimistic

2006-04-09 23:23

Lindsay Barnes

Durban - Health officials are keeping a close watch on a Margate-based nurse and the wife of a man who was admitted to Addington Hospital on Saturday with the potentially deadly Congo fever.

The unidentified man, a 34-year-old farmer from Kimberley, is in a stable condition and doctors are optimistic about his chances of recovery from the viral haemorrhagic disease, said Professor Alan Smith, KwaZulu-Natal's chief specialist virologist at Chief Albert Luthuli Memorial Hospital.

"It's early days yet, but we are optimistic. We are monitoring his blood," he said.

Provincial MEC Peggy Nkonyeni set up a team, including Smith, to trace and establish the risk of transmission of the disease to other people with whom the patient had been in contact in the past seven days, said provincial health department spokesperson Leon Mbangwa.

The team is also in contact with officials in the Northern Cape as the man's three children are in Kimberley.

The farmer's wife has moved to a bed-and-breakfast establishment in Durban and maintains contact with him by cellphone.

Smith said she couldn't visit her husband as he was being held in an isolation unit in hospital.

She, too, is also under strict observation, which means that she is seen daily by a doctor and if she develops any of the first signs of the disease - which are flu-like, including headache, high temperature and possibly backache - she will be admitted to hospital.

Doctors were puzzled

The nurse who treated him at Margate Hospital is also under observation, as are the man's three children.

The patient was holidaying in Margate with his wife when he became ill and sought help at Margate Hospital.

Doctors were stumped by his symptoms and had him transferred to St Augustine's Hospital in Durban, where he tested positive for Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever.

Mbangwa said the hospital did not have the capacity to deal with his case and he was admitted to Addington Hospital at 02:30 on Saturday.

Congo fever is a viral disease from cattle that it is spread to humans by the bont tick (Amblyomma variegatum) sucking on the blood of cattle, then dropping off when full to burrow under sand, he said.

They re-emerge when hungry and scout around for the next victim which, in the absence of a cow, may be a warm and hairy human leg.

Strong and healthy man

It appears that the patient in this case was infected by a tick towards the end of March.

Smith said the disease was not developing at a rapid rate in the farmer.

"He probably received a small amount of the virus, and he is a strong and healthy man.

"There is slow progression and therefore we are optimistic that he will do well," he said.

The farmer was on supportive therapy as there was no medication specifically for the virus, said Smith.

- The Witness