DAKAR – Senegalese authorities are monitoring 87 people and assessing livestock in the Dakar region, where a 35-year-old man died from an illness typically spread by tick bites or contact with infected animals. 

The man was diagnosed with Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever on April 21 after developing symptoms, Senegal’s Health Ministry said in a statement. 

Animal health services are surveying livestock in the neighbourhood where the man worked as a butcher, Dr El Hadji Mamadou N’diaye, director of prevention at the Ministry of Health and Social Action, said on Sunday. 

A Livestock Ministry official could not immediately be reached for comment.  

Crimean–Congo haemorrhagic fever is a viral disease.

The majority of cases are diagnosed in people working in the livestock industry, with transmission through contact with infected animal blood or tissue during slaughter, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The authorities in Senegal typically detect one or two cases in animals each year, but cases in humans are rare, according to Dr N’diaye.  

The virus is endemic in Africa and has a case fatality rate of 40 per cent, according to the Africa CDC website.

It has also been identified in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Symptoms of the virus, for which there is no effective vaccine for either people or animals, include fever, headache, muscle ache, dizziness, neck pain and sore eyes.  

About two-thirds of Senegal’s 17 million population depend on agriculture, including livestock, which accounted for 16 per cent of gross domestic product in 2020, according to the World Bank. BLOOMBERG