8 October 2008
THE woman from Zambia who died in South Africa from a mysterious disease was in fact afflicted by cerebral edema and multi-organ failure, putting to rest suspicions that she was hit by the deadly ebola, experts have confirmed.
Five experts who carried out the investigations on two of the four deceased people revealed that the woman could have died from suspected viral infection from a tick bite that she incurred in Lusaka.
Experts from Specialty Emergency Services (SES) Corpmed Medical Centre (CMC) and Wilderness Safari said that the first victim of the disease, that had so far claimed four lives, owned horses and attended polo matches in Lusaka.
The woman is known to have walked barefoot most of the time and travelled within Africa frequently without seeking medical attention.
Between September 6-8 this year, she attended a wedding in South Africa where she might have had food poisoning along with six others all of whom had developed diarrheoa, vomiting and headache.
On September 10, she developed rash, fever and chest congestion and was attended to by a doctor at Care for Business Clinic, who told her that she had flu and sent her home.
The victim was flown to South Africa on September 12 after her condition deteriorated as she had seizures and died on September 14.
Most of the people she came in contact with, including her family, two doctors and employees at CMC had not shown any symptoms of the disease.
But a paramedic who had spent time with her during her seizure also died from multi-organ failure on October 1, almost two weeks after the meeting. He died at Morningside Hospital after being flown there.
The third victim was a nurse based at the clinic who had attended to the first patient.
The fourth one, a cleaner at the same health institution, died in the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital.
Health Permanent Secretary, Simon Miti said in an interview yesterday that the health authorities in the country had been put on high alert against any symptoms similar to those that afflicted the four dead people.
Dr Miti said no such cases had been reported from the health institutions anywhere in the country and health officers were watching the situation.
He said apart from putting health institutions on high alert, authorities had also deployed officers at ports of entry to monitor the situation for symptoms of the disease.
He said that all the tests conducted in South Africa on the deceased people were negative to the initial suspicions and that the disease remained a mystery.
"We still have no trace of the disease in Zambia and, therefore, the nation should be calm," he said.
Yesterday, the South African media reported that a 51-year-old woman was on Monday admitted to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg with symptoms of the unknown disease.
The Independent Online (IOL) reported that the hospital authorities could, however, not say whether the woman was related to the four earlier victims.
Copyright © 2008 The Times of Zambia. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Read comments. Write your own.
I seem to have a problem with most stories written by most journalists on this story since it surfaced.The stories have not been issue based and quite shallow to say.E-tv in South Africa lied that the woman was a Zambian but what we all know is that she is a white South African born citizen working in Zambia.The paramedic was also white and South African.It was only the Times News paper of South Africa that gave us the light. The impression at the moment is that Zambia is having this deadly virus when no Zambian has died from this mysterious… [Read Full Text]