Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever

It is a viral disease proliferated by ticks and infected livestock

The Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever, commonly known as Congo Fever, was recently found responsible for the deaths of three people in India. This was the first instance of the fever claiming lives in India. It is a viral disease proliferated by ticks and infected livestock.

Upon infecting a human host, the disease incubates for between 1 and 6 days before symptoms appear. After the illness sets in, the liver swells, the kidneys could fail, and the body ejects alarmingly coloured material from an alarming number of orifices. The mortality rate ranges from 9 to 50 per cent.

The three victims included a woman from a village named Kolat, and a  doctor and a nurse who treated the patient. Last week, two more people tested positive for Congo Fever, including the Kolat patient’s husband and a male nurse who had attended to her. The nurse is isolated for now, and doctors believe he’ll come through. Scientists from the National Institute of Virology discovered, after the deaths, that a large number of ticks in parts of Ahmedabad carried the disease.

Right after the outbreak was confirmed, 20 teams of health officials screened over 16,000 people in Kolat. They discovered that the woman’s husband and brother exhibited symptoms synonymous with the fever.

The Telegraph (India) reported: ‘…the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) said blood tests have in the past revealed the presence of the virus in animals which do not get the disease. The CCHF virus can multiply in cattle, sheep, goats and hares.’

The fever was first discovered in Crimea during World War II. Then it was diagnosed in Congo 25 years later in 1969, giving the fever its present name.

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