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Patient with Lassa fever symptoms arrives at Emory

Published  March 12, 2016 12:23pm EST
News
FOX 5 Atlanta
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Credit: Emory University

Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit received a patient who may have Lassa fever on Saturday morning. The patient’s diagnosis is not yet confirmed. Emory will work closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and with the Georgia Department of Public Health in diagnosing the patient.

“Our patient arrived early Saturday morning and is being treated in the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit at Emory University Hospital for symptoms consistent with a fever-related illness,” said Vincent J. Dollard, Associate Vice President, Communications Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences at Emory University.

The patient, who due to confidentiality regulations cannot be identified, is an American physician assistant working for a missionary organization in Togo, West Africa. Emory was contacted by the U.S. State Department and asked to accept the patient in its SCDU, an isolation unit within the hospital in which four patients with Ebola virus disease were successfully treated in 2014.

Lassa is an acute viral infection that has been prevalent in West Africa. Lassa fever is different from Ebola. Although Lassa fever and Ebola can result in similar symptoms, Lassa fever is less likely than Ebola to spread from person to person and is far less deadly. The death rate from Lassa fever is approximately 10 to 20 percent in hospitalized patients, versus approximately 70 percent in Ebola virus disease patients. While both diseases are viral hemorrhagic fevers, bleeding and severe symptoms are not common in cases of Lassa fever.

Additional points to note about Lassa fever:

  • Lassa fever has been endemic in Africa for many years, with an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 people being infected each year.
  • It is primarily spread through direct contact with or the inhalation of droppings from "multimammate” rodents that carry the virus.
  • The virus can be transmitted by infected humans, but only through direct contact with bodily fluids. It cannot be transmitted through casual contact, and is not an airborne virus.

According to the CDC there have been only a few cases of Lassa fever reported in the United States, the most recent being in one patient in 2015 and one patient in 2010.

For more information on Lassa fever, visit the CDC website at: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/lassa/index.html