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Eleven suspected patients of rare disease anthrax will be sent to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) in Mohakhali in Dhaka today for undergoing tests there. All the patients were attacked with the disease at Gala village in Ghatail upazila. Villagers said, Sujat Ali slaughtered one his sick cows and processed the meat with the help of his family members and several neighbours on April 6 last and distributed the meat among his relatives and others. After 24 hours, 11 people including women and children, who did the job of cutting and washing the meat suffered infections on different parts of their bodies including hands and legs followed by itches and pain, locals said. They went to Ghatail upazila health complex for treatment and doctors there gave them antibiotic presuming the disease as an ordinary infection. The patients, however, became anxious as the infections were not cured after two weeks of treatment, sources said. Being informed, a team of doctors visited the patients at the village and suspected the disease as anthrax, said Mohammad Emranul Alam, upazila health and family planning officer in Ghatail. The patients will undergo several tests at IEDCR to diagnose the disease, said Tangail civil surgeon Dr Abdul Basit yesterday.
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Eleven suspected patients of rare disease anthrax will be sent to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) in Mohakhali in Dhaka today for undergoing tests there. All the patients were attacked with the disease at Gala village in Ghatail upazila. Villagers said, Sujat Ali slaughtered one his sick cows and processed the meat with the help of his family members and several neighbours on April 6 last and distributed the meat among his relatives and others. After 24 hours, 11 people including women and children, who did the job of cutting and washing the meat suffered infections on different parts of their bodies including hands and legs followed by itches and pain, locals said. They went to Ghatail upazila health complex for treatment and doctors there gave them antibiotic presuming the disease as an ordinary infection. The patients, however, became anxious as the infections were not cured after two weeks of treatment, sources said. Being informed, a team of doctors visited the patients at the village and suspected the disease as anthrax, said Mohammad Emranul Alam, upazila health and family planning officer in Ghatail. The patients will undergo several tests at IEDCR to diagnose the disease, said Tangail civil surgeon Dr Abdul Basit yesterday. -
Re: Bangladesh: 11 suspected cases of anthrax
I believe the red text gives new meaning to the term "lose your butt".
ANTHRAX, HUMAN, BOVINE - BANGLADESH: (TANGAIL) SUSPECTED, REQUEST FOR
INFORMATION
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A ProMED-mail post
<http://www.promedmail.org>
ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases
<http://www.isid.org>
Date: Wed 21 Apr 2010
Source: The Daily Star (Bangladesh) [edited]
<http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=135237>
A total of 11 suspected patients of rare [sic] disease anthrax will be sent
to the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) in
Mohakhali in Dhaka today [21 Apr 2010] to undergo tests there.
All the patients were attacked with the disease at Gala village in Ghatail
upazila [sub district, in Tangail district, Dhaka division]. Villagers said
[that the owner] slaughtered one of his sick cows, processed the meat with
the help of his family members and several neighbours on [6 Apr 2010], and
distributed the meat among his relatives and others. After 24 hours, 11
people including women and children who did the job of cutting and washing
the meat, suffered infections on different parts of their bodies including
hands and legs followed by itches and pain, local people said.
The infected people are [aged 60, 45, 42, 40, 28, 22, 17, 14, 13, 12, and
7.] They went to Ghatail upazila health complex for treatment and doctors
there gave them antibiotic, presuming the disease was an ordinary
infection. The patients, however, became anxious as the infections were not
cured after 2 weeks of treatment, sources said. Being informed, a team of
doctors visited the patients at the village and suspected the disease as
anthrax, said Mohammad Emranul Alam, upazila health and family planning
officer in Ghatail.
The patients will undergo several tests at IEDCR to diagnose the disease,
said Tangail civil surgeon Dr Abdul Basit yesterday [20 Apr 2010].
--
communicated by:
ProMED-mail rapporteur Brent Barrett
[This sounds just like an outbreak of cutaneous anthrax following the
slaughtering and butchering of a sick animal. As the 11 people have already
been treated with antibiotics, the IEDCR staff may have problems in
confirming the cause as anthrax as _Bacillus anthracis_ is normally very
sensitive to antibiotics and the initial dose may well have done what it
was expected to do. This is a disease where the inflammation and oedema are
slow to go down, which is why some doctors in their impatience will
radically debride the area -- I know a young man in Queensland who lost a
buttock because of this. However there is a Russian skin test with
anthracin, which is useful for retrospective investigations.
Latterly Bangladesh has been merely reporting to OIE that the disease is
present, but without numbers. The diagnostic services are severely
underfunded and therefore have little outreach.
Epidemiology students should check out the age distribution of those
affected. It is a nice example of what one expects to see in these
circumstances with the majority in the 45-17 age range. Small children are
usually missing from such outbreaks and these kids got infected helping
their parents. From experience with such data I usually work on the basis
of 10 people with lesions for every cow slaughtered. In Western Europe
where such events are now rare outside Spain one can expect 10 dead cows
for any human case; Spain has not reported any animal cases in recent years
but still reports one to 2 dozen human cases each year. Not hard and fast
ratios but useful when asking questions as to what really happened. - Mod.MHJ
The HealthMap/ProMED-mail interactive map of Bangladesh is available at
<http://healthmap.org/r/01dq>. Tangail district in central Bangladesh can
be located on the map at
<http://www.miraebd.net/demo/Bangladesh%20Maps.htm>. - Sr.Tech.Ed.MJ]
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