Oh My God, Doctor dies of Lassa fever after performing surgeries on infected pregnant women

Oh My God, Doctor dies of Lassa fever after performing surgeries on infected pregnant women

A Dutch doctor who contracted Lassa hemorrhagic fever in Sierra Leone after treating patients has died in hospital, while a second doctor is undergoing treatment, the top Dutch health official said Sunday .
The unnamed doctor was flown back to the Netherlands on Tuesday and had been treated at a special isolation ward at a hospital in Leiden near Schiphol airport.
“The patient… which has been treated in strict isolation , has died last night , ” Dutch Health Minister Bruno Bruins said.
“A second doctor also has Lassa fever and has been repatriated to the Netherlands . Both doctors were infected in Sierra Leone , most likely during medical treatment, ” the minister said.
The second patient has been admitted to a hospital in the central Dutch city of Utrecht in an isolation unit which was also used to treat a patient who contracted Ebola in 2014.
In a statement , the Sierra Leonean Health Ministry said the deceased Dutch doctor developed Lassa fever symptoms after performing a cesarean section on a pregnant woman at the Masanga Hospital in central Sierra Leone .
The doctor also helped with the evacuation of a second woman who suffered from a septic wound after an abortion.
Both women died shortly afterwards.
“He developed signs of fever, headache , and general malaise … and was treated for typhoid , malaria and influenza but symptoms persisted . ”
He was then flown back to the Netherlands where he tested “positive for Lassa fever on the same day . ”
The second doctor helped in both the cases and tested positive for the disease.
Dutch minister Bruins said the Netherlands “is in close contact with those involved in Sierra Leone ” and that Dutch nurses who had been in contact with the two Sierra Leonean patients are being flown back.
Lassa fever — named after the place in Nigeria where it was first discovered in 1969 — is caused by a haemorrhagic virus which belongs to the same family as Marburg and Ebola , according to the Centres for Disease Control .
It is mainly spread by rodents and is endemic to parts of West Africa including Sierra Leone , Guinea , Liberia and Nigeria .
( AFP)