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 will 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 10.40am on Monday.
”The patient passed away in hospital. He had organ failure from different organs,” said Western Cape health minister Pierre Uys at a media briefing at Groote Schuur.
Uys said the farm worker 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.
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.
Immediately after Congo fever was diagnosed, everybody who had 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 that 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.
Cloete said officials are working on the assumption that he contracted the disease while slaughtering a cow on September 24.
He said farmers in the Southern Cape area are being advised to ensure their animals are free of ticks, which pass on the disease by biting people or animals, whose blood then carries the disease.
Cloete said meat from infected carcasses is safe to consume.
Professor Robin Wood, an infectious-disease specialist at Groote Schuur hospital, said the incubation period varies from three to 14 days depending on how a person was infected.
This means the outbreak could be considered to have been contained if there are 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 involves blood transfusions.
Wood said the mortality of the disease varies. In the most recent case, the victim was at an advanced stage of the illness by the time he was taken for treatment. — Sapa