RAWALPINDI, Feb 25: Two brothers, suspected to be suffering from Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), died at the Holy Family Hospital on Tuesday, hospital staff told this reporter.

These deaths, occurring five days after a similar incident was reported from Rawalpindi General Hospital, coincided with the first death anniversaries of two women, including a lady doctor, who died of CCHF a year ago at the same hospital.

The victims, Jonaid, 3, and Afaq, 5, had come to the hospital on Tuesday at 2am with high-grade fever and epistaxis (nasal bleeding) from Gawalmandi, a thickly populated locality of the city. One of them died a few hours after arriving at the hospital, while the other expired at around 10am.

Gawalmandi is mostly inhabited by lower middle class families and has highly unhygienic environs. The area is administratively controlled by the cantonment board.

The disease is transmitted to human beings by animal-borne ticks and is also acquired by direct contact with blood and secretions of the infected patients. The illness manifests itself as fever, headache, shivering and diarrhoea.

The hospital administration has constituted a committee to control the crisis. The committee has started working and the people who remained in close contact with the victims have been put on prophylactic treatment, Dr Aqeela Ashraf, medical superintendent of HFH, told this reporter.

A doctor said seven ‘high contacts’, excluding the immediate relatives of the victims, had been identified and isolated. The exact number of people under surveillance is 16.

The paediatric emergency ward and intensive care unit, where the two boys were kept for treatment, have been sealed and disinfected, Dr Ashraf said.

The blood samples of both the victims have been collected by National Institute of Health and will be sent to South Africa for analysis. The confirmation or otherwise of the disease can only be done after the report from South Africa is received, and till then, these cases will continue to be treated as suspected, a doctor said.

However, it appears that the follow-up of these cases by the hospital and local health department was lacking and the bereaved family was not properly instructed about the preventive measures to be taken while handling the bodies. There is a special protocol for handling and burial in such cases.

When asked about this aspect, Dr Aqeela said: “We had probably informed them.”

“Actually, we were very disturbed after learning about the cases and got busy with measures for protecting the doctors, who are highly vulnerable to such infections,” she said.

Dr Abbass Hayat, a pathologist, told this reporter that everything was under control and all possible measures were being taken for the protection of doctors and patients. He said the situation was being observed strictly.

Meanwhile, District Nazim Raja Tariq Kiani, who is in Lahore for the National Institute of Public Administration training, has directed the district coordination officer to hold an inquiry into the occurrence of the suspected cases in the district and submit a report to him.

Mr Kiani said he was planning to take some time off from the training and return to the city to monitor the situation.

The cases caused panic among the doctors at the HFH, who lost one of their young colleagues, Dr Farzana, last year after she contracted the disease from one of her patients.