A man in Spain who was bitten by a tick has been hospitalized and diagnosed with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), a disease that can kill up to 40 percent of people who contract it.
The patient was first admitted to a local hospital in the northwestern city of León. After being transferred to another hospital on a military plane, the Spanish Defense Ministry said on Thursday.
“He has a tick bite and remains in a stable condition, despite the clinical severity of this pathology,” the health authorities of the Castile and Leon region said in a statement.
The viral disease is found mainly in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Asia and more rarely in Europe.
In Europe, cases have so far been restricted to the Balkans, Russia, Spain and Turkey, according to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
A few cases have been reported in the UK, with the latest case in March this year involving a woman who had traveled to Afghanistan. His is the third known case in the UK, following cases in 2012 and 2014, which has not spread to anyone else.
The disease was first detected in the Crimea in 1944. It has a case fatality rate of between 10% and 40%, with a global case fatality rate of 30%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) .
CCHF is mainly found in Africa, Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East
(WHO)
Transmission of the virus between humans occurs through close contact with blood or body fluids, according to the WHO.
A tick bite or contact with infected animal blood or tissue can also transmit the disease.
The Hyalomma tick, the main carrier of the disease, is not established in the UK and the virus has not been found in ticks native to the country.
The vast majority of cases of CCHF are mild or asymptomatic. But symptoms can include fever, bleeding from broken capillaries in the eyes and skin, sensitivity to light, muscle pain, dizziness, vomiting, nosebleeds, bruising and sore throat in the early stages, which could lead to kidney failure. ‘organs and internal bleeding. .
Spain detected its first case of HCC in 2011. In 2016, a Spanish man died after being diagnosed with the disease following a tick bite.
In 1969, some 25 years after it was first detected in the Crimea, pathologists found the disease to be the same as that identified in the Congo in 1956. The place names were then combined to give the virus its name .
Currently, one patient’s disease is managed with antiviral drugs, but there is no specific antiviral for CCHF and no approved vaccine.
Prevention, early diagnosis and isolation of a patient from others in healthcare settings are the only ways to prevent the spread of the virus, according to WHO and ECDC.