'Five days later she was dead'
07/10/2008 23:36  - (SA)  Verashni Pillay

Johannesburg - "She was a healthy young woman ... and five days later she was dead," says Corné Krige of his cousin who was the first person to die from a mystery disease which has claimed three lives in Gauteng.

Cecilia van Deventer, 36, was airlifted from Zambia to the Morningside Medi-Clinic in Sandton on September 12 and treated for tick-bite fever and other potential infectious diseases, but died two days later.  A paramedic from Specialty Medical Services who had accompanied Van Deventer, Hannes Els, 36, died last week and a nurse at the Morningside Medi-Clinic, 34-year-old Gladys Mthembu, died on Sunday.

All three had similar symptoms such as fever, nausea, a skin rash, diarrhoea and a headache.

'She hated shoes'  Krige told News24 that he'd grown up with Cecilia.  He recalled Van Deventer's great love of the outdoors.

"She hated wearing shoes! She was a person who loved being out in the fields and in the bush," Krige said of his cousin.  "It was such a tragedy that she was taken so early," the former Springbok skipper said on Tuesday, adding that her family were still trying to come to grips with the loss.  "She didn't speak badly about anyone. She was a young woman with her life ahead of her. It's also tragic that people who helped her are also dead. We're thinking about their families as well."  It's suspected that it might have been during one of Cecile's outdoor excursions that she was bitten by a tick.  She became extremely ill, but Zambian hospitals couldn't diagnose her disease and she was airlifted to South Africa.

100+ under observation

Sapa reported on Tuesday that more than a hundred people who had come into contact with the three patients who'd died, are under observation.  Attending doctor Nivesh Sewlall said of those being observed, six had been taken to hospital, but four had already been discharged.  "If we are not sure of their symptoms we will put them in isolation to evaluate," he said.

Doctor Lucille Blumberg of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) said while the as yet unidentified illness was currently "controlled", doctors would have to wait for 21 days before they could possibly declare it contained.  Twenty-one days is the period doctors believe the illness could still move from exposure to incubation to manifestation.  Meanwhile, intensive care specialist Professor Guy Richards insisted that only those "with direct exposure to the three cases" are at risk.

WHO experts arrive

Morningside Medi-Clinic Gauteng marketing manager Melinda Pelser also said: "This hospital is at no risk, this is where there is a huge misunderstanding.  "You cannot contract the illness through air, [you cannot contract it] unless you have had direct contact with a patient mostly though blood, stool and urine. We don't want panic out there."  On Tuesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said it had flown in a laboratory expert and disease surveillance expert to help South African health authorities determine the illness.  The NICD is also collaborating with the US Centres for Disease Control.

The Department of Health's chief director of communicable diseases, Dr Frew Benson, told News24 on Tuesday that they suspect it is Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever.

- News24