werner@aecom.UUCP (Craig Werner) (10/16/85)
> Re: getting AIDS by sticking yourself with a needle while treating an AIDS > patient. > > Wasn't there a potential epidemic of Lhasa Fever because some lab tech infected > him or herself this way, a few years back? Whenever someone asks me how bad AIDS is, I respond, "Well at least it isn't as bad as Lassa Fever." It begins with fever, malaise, muscle aches, and a sore throat (just like a cold.) However from there it spreads and pretty much convinces every organ to close shop. Lassa fever is one of the most deadliest and most contagious diseases known to man. It was first described in the early 70s by a group of Columbia U. researchers. The first epidemic started with a nurse called LW, who worked in a missionary hospital in the town of Lassa, in the Cameron foothills of Nigeria. After a week, unresponsive to antibiotics she was flown to a larger hospital in Jos, where she died the next day. Within the next week, two out of three of her nurses were dead of the disease, and a third was deathly ill. She was flown to New York (prompting several staff physicians at Columbia Presbyterian to leave the country :-) ) and placed in isolation, where despite having a 107 degree fever for a week, survived and after several months in the hospital recovered. Meanwhile, one of the researchers returned to Nigeria to study additional cases. On Feb 18, 1970, 4 days after her paper describing the epidemic was accepted for publication, she died of Lassa fever herself, the first outbreak's final victim. (Source: Ten Diseases You Were Better Off Not Knowing About) ( G. Thomas, MD and L. Shreiner, MD _That's_Incurable_) Lassa Fever is not AIDS. However, in a final twist, Suramin, one of the antiviral drugs used to treat Lassa fever, is currently undergoing clinical trials against the AIDS virus. -- Craig Werner !philabs!aecom!werner "The world is just a straight man for you sometimes"