Congo virus:Killing tick drive on, two patients in focus

Two individuals with Congo-Crimeam hemorrhagic fever are presently admitted in two hospitals of Ahmedabad. While one patient is under treatment of Dr. Kamlesh Upadhyay at Civil hospital, the other is in city’s Sterling hospital. Both are believed to have caught CCHF via Aminaben, a patient who died due to CCHF.

The patient in Civil hospital is late Aminaben’s brother, while the patient in Sterling hospital is her husband.

Doctors are treating the patients under strict protocol. The protocol are somewhat similar to what they were during swine flu scare.

Meanwhile in Sanand belt’s Kolat village – from where Aminaben came to Ahmedabad for treatment – the teams of state medical department and Animal husbandry departments are active. While 20 medical screening teams visit door-to-door in five kms radius of Kolat village, the Animal department teams are busy in eliminating maximum number of tick which is responsible for transmitting the virus from animal to human.

It should be mentioned here that Sanand’s Aminaben first visited a doctor in Bopal, and then city’s Shelby hospital for treatment of flue like illness. However none kind of treatment could cure Aminaben. Moreover a doctor and nurse who were involved in her treatment also died. When the doctor caught flue like symptoms he was taken to Shrey hospital and later to Sterling hospital. However both these hospitals failed to understand the illness. After Aminaben and a doctor who treated him both died, and the nurse was suspected suffering from similar complication, city’s Shelby hospital sent blood sample of their nurse to Pune based National Institute of Virology urgently in flight on 14th of January Uttarayan day according to Dr. Niraj Lal. After primary test, the Pune based institute found something serious in this case, and the Pune team visited Ahmedabad on next day. During this visit and further test confirmed that this was Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever case. Though the nurse suffering from same died, the pathway of treatment for other patients was opened thanks to confirmation of type of the virus.

Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever is treatable. It is important that present two patients are isolated well, and any further spread from their body is prevented effectively. At the same time, any new such case will be a bad news.