Lassa fever scare

Press, 14 August 1976, Page 6

Lassa fever scare

NZPA Toronto I Health authorities in Toronto have ordered an alert for Lassa fever after a woman was admitted to hospital with symptoms of the illness. The fever is highly contagious, with a mortality rate of 30 per cent to 50 per cent. The Ontario Health Minis-! ter (Mr Frank Miller) said ( no more patients would be I admitted to Toronto’s Etobicoke General Hospital, where; the woman was taken after she collapsed upon returning from a European holiday. Mr Miller said every "doctor in the province had been alerted to check patients for tassa fever symptoms. Two doctors who treated the woman had been confined to their homes. The woman. Mrs Olga Kamckey, aged 56. of St Catherines. Ontario, arrived

back in Canada on August 2. The authorities were trying to trace more than 400 passengers and crew who flew with her on the flight. Confirmation of the woman’s sickness as Lassa fever probably cannot be made until later this week. But The Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta, where [some tests were done, told (Canadian officials it probably I is Lassa fever. I The Atlanta centre, which I examined samples of blood (and urine from the woman, (said they contained Lassa fever antibodies. This indicated that she had been in contact with the disease before her recent illness. A final diagnosis was expected later this week. Mrs Kamckey had visited the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Britain, which had a Lassa fever scare recently. The disease was first re-

corded in 1969 in the village of Lassa, in northern Nigeria. It is initially spread by a species of West African rat. A British doctor died in London last year after contracting the disease in Nigeria. > NZPA reports from Melbourne that tests on blood samples from an elderly Australian man known to have been in contact with a British victim of the fever were negative. Two batches of blood samples were flown to the Atlanta centre for analysis after the man was admitted to hospital in what officials described as a “frail and very sick” condition.

In London, five people were admitted to hospital earlier this month with suspected Lassa fever. But they will be released, the Ministry of Health said yesterday. One, an engineer, who had been working in Nigeria, was now fit and well after recovering from the infection.