Tick-borne fever claims victims in Turkey
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A tick-borne viral fever related to the more deadly Ebola virus may have claimed its 12th victim in Turkey this year, the state Anatolian news agency said on Wednesday.
Health officials told Reuters they were conducting tests on samples from 53-year-old Bayram Sacinti, who died earlier in the day after being hospitalised on suspicion of contracting the disease, known as Crimea-Congo haemorrhagic fever.
“We are carrying out tests. We have not yet confirmed the cause of his death,” one official said.
The ministry has confirmed 44 deaths from the disease in Turkey since 2003, 11 of them so far this year. It is also investigating a death that occurred last weekend.
Anatolian said 14 other people, including three children, were being treated in the same hospital as Sacinti, in the Black Sea city of Samsun, for suspected Crimea-Congo fever.
Last week, Health Minister Recep Akdag dismissed as scare-mongering media talk of a possible epidemic in Turkey and called for calm.
His ministry has urged farmers and others in the countryside to take protective measures, such as covering the whole body and wearing thick boots.
Experts say the mortality rate from the disease, which has no known cure, stands at about five percent.
Crimea-Congo hemorrhagic fever has so far been identified in 22 provinces in Turkey, mostly in central Anatolia, the health ministry said in a statement.
The Crimea-Congo virus is found in many countries in Africa, Europe and Asia and belongs to the same family as the Ebola virus, which has killed hundreds of humans and primates in Africa.
Ebola damages blood vessels and can cause extensive bleeding, diarrhoea and shock. It is transmitted by infected body fluids and kills up to 90 percent of its victims.
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