Bangladesh finds new bacterial disease in humans

The government’s disease monitoring agency has identified a new bacterial disease that can be fatal, if left untreated.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 31 Jan 2016, 12:38 PM
Updated : 31 Jan 2016, 01:17 PM

IEDCR director Prof Mahmudur Rahman said they identified leptospirosis while testing food-borne illnesses in 10 hospital patients under a new surveillance system that went from May 2014 to Dec 2015.

Diarrhea, cholera, typhoid and hepatitis were the common foodborne illnesses they found during the surveillance. The rate was higher in 2015 than 2014.

“But when we tested the fever cases for leptospirosis, 7.1 percent were found to carry the disease,” the director said on Sunday.

Fever is one of the key symptoms of leptospirosis, which is not a foodborne illness.

The bacteria that cause the disease are spread through the urine of infected animals, mostly rodents, which can get into water or soil and survive there for weeks to months.

People get it while wading in the contaminated water without any protective clothing or footwear.

“This is curable with antibiotics, but if left untreated can cause kidney failure, brain infections and many other complications that can lead to death,” Prof Rahman said.

He said the IEDCR tested for this bacterial disease as they had blood samples of 2113 fever cases for testing foodborne illnesses, some of which they suspected were leptospirosis, globally known as a neglected tropical disease.

An international study led by the Yale School of Public Health last year found that the global burden of this disease was “far greater than previously estimated”, resulting in more than 1 million new infections and nearly 59,000 deaths annually.

The report also said that it was “a growing scourge” in resource-poor settings throughout Latin America, Africa, Asia, and island nations, though the disease was “relatively unknown” in the developed world.

The IEDCR surveillance was not aimed at finding mortality from the disease, but it found two patients had died of leptospirosis at Dhaka Medical College Hospital. They were from a village in Narshingdhi .

Most of the patients, nearly 12 percent, were found admitted at Uttara Adhunik Medical College Hospital in Dhaka, followed by Habiganj Sadar Hospital, over 9 percent, and Satkhira Sadar Hospital, nearly 8 percent.

The director said awareness was the key to prevent the disease.