Doctors dazed by deadly disease

2005-07-27 11:27

Beijing - A disease caused by bacteria from pigs has affected more than 100 people in southwest China with the death toll rising to 24 and no effective drugs to treat it, the health ministry and state media said on Wednesday.

At least another 21 patients were in critical condition after an outbreak of the disease was discovered last month in Sichuan province, the ministry said.

As of noon on Tuesday, Sichuan reported 117 people had been stricken with the disease, of which 76 cases have been confirmed, while 41 cases were suspected, the ministry said on its website.

Only five patients have recovered and left hospital so far.

The disease, caused by the streptococcus suis bacteria, which is spread among pigs, has proved so deadly that about a third of the 76 confirmed cases have died.

The people infected included farmers, all of whom had slaughtered pigs found to have the disease, the ministry said. Others fell ill from processing the pork.

No human-to-human infection had been found, it said.

Just a day earlier on Tuesday, China had reported only 19 deaths among a total of 80 people affected.

Symptoms of the disease included high fever, nausea, vomiting and haemorrhaging. Many of the patients go into severe shock.

Doctors have yet to find specific drugs to effectively treat the sick and are relying on heavy doses of antibiotics, which are not working, given the high death toll, China Daily said Wednesday.

"The Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention is conducting drug sensitivity tests to find a more effective treatment," Mao Qun'an, spokesperson for the health ministry, was quoted as saying.

Despite the lack of a reliable treatment, experts believe the outbreak can be controlled, the report said.

Human infections can be prevented if people refrain from slaughtering, processing or eating infected pigs, Chen Huanchun, vice president of Huazhong Agricultural University, was quoted as saying.

Also, the bacteria can only infect people through open wounds or if they digest the infected meat, said Chen, a member of an expert group set up by the ministry of agriculture to conduct on-the-spot investigations.

The Guangzhou Animal Biological Medicine Plant, meanwhile, is working on a vaccine to protect pigs from the disease and is expected to produce a viable inoculation in about a week, Chen added.

The infected farmers and pigs are scattered among more than 70 villages in two Sichuan cities, Ziyang and Neijiang. So far no epidemic has been reported in other regions of Sichuan or the rest of the country.

The disease is rare with the first recorded case found in Denmark in 1968. More than 200 cases of human infection have been reported globally since then.

- AFP