By Louise Flanagan
The link between the first two people who died from a viral haemorrhagic fever in Johannesburg recently was discovered by accident.
"It was blind luck," said Dr Nivesh Sewlall who realised the cases were linked.
Sewlall is an intensive-care specialist and lung specialist with an interest in infectious diseases at the Morningside Medi-Clinic Private Hospital in Johannesburg.
'It was blind luck' "On Monday last week at 4.15pm I made the connection," Sewlall said.
About two weeks earlier, on September 12, critically-ill Cecilia van Deventer had arrived at Morningside from Zambia with an unidentified illness. She died two days later.
Sewlall treated her.
On September 27 paramedic Hannes Els arrived at Morningside. He took care of Van Deventer on the medical charter flight to SA and co-incidentally returned to Morningside when he also became ill, not realising his illness was connected to that of Van Deventer.
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On Monday last week, two days after Els arrived, Sewlall overheard a discussion about the new patient that alerted him. He investigated, realised Els had the same symptoms as Van Deventer, and discovered the connection between the pair.
'Viruses are tricky' Els died two days later.
The confirmation of the link made it likely that the disease was infectious and probably a viral haemorrhagic fever rather than the ordinary tick-bite fever which doctors had eventually decided Van Deventer probably had.
Sewlall immediately called Dr Lucille Blumberg at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases and notified the Department of Health, as haemorrhagic fevers are a notifiable disease.
Sewlall called it one of the fastest linkings of the first cases in an outbreak.
The last time Morningside treated a case of haemorrhagic fever was about 14 years ago, when there was an ebola outbreak in Johannesburg.
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