Congo fever: 151 exposed

2005-10-10 17:15

Cape Town - Health officials are monitoring 151 people for symptoms of the deadly Congo fever virus, which claimed the life of an unnamed farm labourer at Groote Schuur Hospital on Monday.

Confident the disease would not spread, officials on Monday discharged seven people, including the dead man's wife and son, from the Riversdale hospital.

The 46-year-old farm labourer from Riversdale, died of multiple organ failure at 10:40 on Monday.

"The patient passed away in hospital. He had organ failure from different organs," said Western Cape Health MEC, Pierre Uys, at a media briefing at Groote Schuur.

Uys said the farmworker had been in contact with people in Slangriver, Riversdale, George and Groote Schuur.

"This is the only case at this moment in time that we do have. We did notify the national department of health so they're fully aware of what's happening," said Uys.

Hospital staff on alert

Dr Keith Cloete, acting chief of health programmes in the Western Cape, said the man took ill on September 26, was admitted to Riversdale Hospital on October 3, and was transferred to George Hospital the next day.

He was then taken to Groote Schuur where the positive diagnosis was confirmed and he was moved into an isolation ward on October 7.

Once the Congo fever diagnosis had been confirmed, everybody who'd come into contact with him was identified - 74 staff at Groote Schuur; 28 people in the George area and 49 people in Riversdale, said Cloete.

"We do morning and evening temperatures on all of them. We also monitor them for symptoms suggestive of developing the illness."

Cloete said the seven people, including four co-workers, from Riversdale were discharged after doctors felt that they were "significantly out of danger".

Although the man's bleeding - Congo fever is a haemorrhagic fever which causes bleeding from all bodily orifices - was initially stabilised, he took a turn for the worse before his death. His family has asked that his name not be released.

Mortality rate varies

Cloete said officials were working on the assumption he contracted the disease while slaughtering a cow on September 24.

He said farmers in the Southern Cape area were being advised to ensure their animals were free of ticks, which passed on the disease by biting people or animals, whose blood then carried the disease.

Cloete said meat from infected carcasses was safe to consume.

Professor Robin Wood, an infectious disease specialist at Groote Schuur Hospital, said the incubation period varied from three to 14 days depending on how a person had been infected.

This meant the outbreak could be considered to have been contained if there were no more cases by October 21, he said.

Wood said the last case at Groote Schuur was in 2001, when the patient survived. A larger outbreak was handled at Tygerberg Hospital in 1996.

"This is a disease which occurs relatively infrequently, but very widely across the world..." Treatment involved blood transfusions.

Wood said the mortality of the disease varied. In the most recent case, the victim was at an advanced stage of the illness by the time he was taken for treatment.

- SAPA