Mite-borne infectious disease confirmed in east China
31/10/2008 17:32
Nearly 60 people in east China's Anhui Province have been confirmed as
having tropical typhus, an infectious disease caused by mite larva bites, health
authorities said today.
A statement on the provincial health department
website today said 58 cases had been confirmed since Oct. 1, including 47 in
Fuyang City, eight in Bengbu and three in Bozhou.
"All the patients received
timely treatment and no deaths were reported. Some of them have recovered and
been discharged from hospital," it said.
Hospitals had been put on alert for
more potential cases.
The health department in Fuyang City received reports
on Saturday saying the city's two main hospitals had received more than 200
patients with persistent high fevers and headaches since Oct. 1.
The
provincial health department sent an expert panel to Fuyang on Monday. While the
majority of cases were diagnosed as pneumonia or measles, 16 were confirmed on
Wednesday after blood tests as tropical typhus, or tsutsugamushi
disease.
"It's a mite-borne infectious disease caused by a microorganism
known as Rickettsia tsutsugamushi," said Wu Jiabing, a disease prevention expert
with the provincial health department and head of the expert panel.
More
cases were confirmed on Thursday.
One of the confirmed patients, 59-year-old
Zhang Yucai, said he had suffered high fever, headache and occasional tics for
more than a week before he went to the Fuyang People's Hospital on
Monday.
"The medicine I took at home didn't work and even the doctors
couldn't tell what the problem was," he said. "Several other villagers had
similar symptoms."
He was transferred to the No. 2 People's Hospital in
Fuyang on the same day and remains under observation with dozens of
others.
"It takes seven to 10 days for the patients to fully recover," said
Zhang Yazhou, deputy chief of the health department in Fuyang. He said it was
the first ever tropical typhus outbreak in Fuyang.
The disease, which also
features rashes and swollen glands, is reported occasionally in the coastal
regions of eastern and southern China. It also occurs in Japan, India and
Australia.
Xinhua
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