KARACHI: The confirmation of two more cases of Congo-Crimean haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) in the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) on Saturday brought the annual tally to 16 in the city, 15-year high, officials said.

Official figures obtained from the provincial health department showed that it had documented 14 CCHF cases, including two women, one of whom was among the six who died of the disease, by the end of November.

Two more cases were reported at the JPMC this month, taking the total number of CCHF victims to 16.

Official figures show a 55-year-old woman as the oldest and a four-year-old boy as the youngest victims of the disease.

Barring five, all the victims were young, aged between four and 27 years.

“This year recorded the most CCHF cases in Karachi since year 2000,” said a senior official in the Sindh health department.

However, he said that because of lack of the department’s capability to preserve the records on a scientific basis, he could not share the previous figures, especially the years when such cases were reported in greater numbers.

“We can safely say that it is a 15-year high, or a high since we started documenting the cases,” he added.

A young meat-seller from Azizabad was the first CCHF victim, who died of the disease in August.

Since then five more victims, including a young woman, have died.

Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2014