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- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
Monday, 6 October 2008
Four die of mystery Zambian fever in 3 SA hospitals
11:21 | 
Posted by
JanDeKlerk |
Two patients died at Morningside Medi-Clinic, one died at Leratong Hospital and another one at Sir Albert Robinson Hospital... by Jan de Klerk.
Note: I am publishing this totally irrelevant picture of two extraordinary people with this story to just lighten the mood a bit... because this story is very grim indeed...
Oct 6 2008 - Johannesburg - A cleaner at the Morningside Medi-Clinic may have become the fourth victim of the mysterious haemorrhagic fever of which a Zambian patient had died within just a day of her arrival with a Zambian paramedic last week.
The latest victim may be a woman cleaner at the private, 230-bed private Morningside Medi-Clinic hospmngrmorni@mediclinic.co.za which is located on the edge of upmarket Sandton north of Johannesburg.
This string of private hospitals all across SA often treat wealthy patients from other African countries - and after the Zambian woman died there, a nurse who had been in contact with her, also died shortly thereafter, as did the Zambian paramedic who had accompanied the first patient.
This specific Morningside Medi-clinic has two specialists in the field of haemological pathology, namely Dr Johnny Mahlangu and Dr Gnanasagren Pillay - who may or may not have had to carry out the testing procedures on these patients of course. Just thought you'd like to know.
http://www.morningsidemc.co.za/default.asp?menu=false&page=http://www.mediclinic.co.za/docsearch/docsearch.aspx
However it's not certain that the cleaner had died of the same viral infection as yet, even though she showed the identical symptoms to the three others who had died before her: 'the cleaner had been a very sickly person for a long time and had been in and out of hospitals,' a health department spokesman, Fidel Hadebe, said. This description is often used by South Africans to describe HIV-AIDS.
What makes this story so deeply sad is that the black woman cleaner fell ill while working at this upperclass private hospital - but had to be taken for treatment to the public Leratong Hospital on the West Rand -- where she died. And the nurse who had worked with these two Zambian patients was taken to the Sir Albert Robinson Hospital, both on the West Rand. Neither hospital has any specialist-facilities to isolate patients with such suspected infections -- meaning that medical staff and patients at three different hospitals in the greater Johannesburg region have now also been exposed to this deadly infection, whatever it may be. Government spindoctors are already shouting 'don't panic, don't panic', but they don't even know what the disease is as yet.
Who is panicking anyway -- except these stupid government officials running around shouting, 'don't panic...?
Melinda Pelser, district marketing manager of Medi-Clinic, said on Sunday she could not release the names of the patients as the disease was a notifiable one.
'Contageous: transmitted via drops of fluid, when a person coughs or sneezes...'
- "All we know is that it is highly contagious. It is believed to be transmitted via drops of fluid, when one person coughs or sneezes or when someone encounters the bodily fluids of the infected person," she said. "It is serious enough to be careful. We feel compelled to warn people." -
SA health department bungling?
However she was contradicted by the health department which today issued a statement claiming that the mystery illness 'cannot be transmitted through the air and that there's no need to panic.'- How can they even say that until they know exactly what disease has been brought into South Africa from Zambia this month? Tests were not conclusive of any particular disease including viral hemorrhagic fevers said the health department spokesman.
Well of course they wouldn't find anything until virologists have actually located the virus itself: these initial blood tests are designed to only seek out antibodies to such infections, but if the patients are already bleeding internally and from all their bodily orifices for instance, their blood does not get the chance to manufacture antibodies at all.
It's a rule of thumb among policemen and ambulance personnel in South Africa that whenever patients have such symptoms, they must be handled under strict barrier-nursing conditions, in total isolation, whether the tests were 'conclusive' or not.- Even ambulance personnel and cops know this in South Africa, because there's always the chance of coming across such a patient among the teeming hungry multitudes from the rest of Africa ... laughingly referred to as 'tourists'... and one must know the symptoms, otherwise you die!
Employers are not allowed to test workers for infectious diseases:
This begs two questions: If the cleaner already had such frail health and may have been suffering from an infectious ailment, why on earth was she allowed to work in any hospital? And if the nurse was healthy, how could both women then have succumbed to this so quickly?
- The answer is typically South African: employers are not allowed to know the HIV-status of their workers at all -- they are not allowed to have them tested even when they work closely with members of the public -- because such testing would 'intervene with their human rights to privacy'.
Actually Hadebe is wrong -- by law, it is the ultimate responsibility of the health department to oversee all infectious disease-treatments in the country are undertaken properly, whether in private- or public hospital settings. Of course if your previous health minister threw a concoction of beetroot and garlic around with claims that it was an Aids-cure, what kind of intelligent decision-making could you ever expect from her former underlings?
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2405028,00.html
http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/2118685/__Ziekenhuis_sluit_operatiekamers__.html
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