Father and son die of undiagnosed contagious disease in Macedonia
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E-mail Xinhua, July 27, 2017
SKOPJE, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Two people, a father and a son, died within 48 hours at the Clinic for Infective Diseases here after suffering from symptoms of an undiagnosed illness, Macedonian health authorities revealed on Wednesday.
The two were admitted to hospital with high fever and vomits, and their condition quickly worsened.
The father and son lived in the village of Simnica, near the western Macedonian town Gostivar. At least four other inhabitants of the same village have been hospitalized with light symptoms of the apparently contagious disease.
According to the director of the Commission for the Prevention of Contagious Diseases, Zvonko Milenkovic, there is no need to raise the alarm among the citizens.
"In this specific case, it is certainly not a disease with a high degree of transmission among humans. This is the reason that I don't see any need to create panic or insecurity among the people," Milenkovic told Xinhua in Skopje on Wednesday.
The authorities suspect the infectious disease might be a dangerous hemorrhagic fever transmitted by ticks and rodents, or a case of the mosquito-born West Nile virus.
One of the reasons the disease has yet to be determined is the lack of the needed reagents at the country's cash-strapped Institute for Public Health, Macedonian media revealed.
The institute's financial situation has been poor and its accounts have been blocked for some time due to unpaid electricity bills.
"Aside from all the difficulties that the institute has faced in recent period, we managed to get the reagents. We expect the results from the analysis by tomorrow afternoon," the institute's director Shaban Memeti said to web portal Nova TV. Enditem
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