QUETTA, Sept 16: A senior doctor and an operation theatre technician were infected with Congo virus during a surgical operation at a private hospital in Quetta.

“A patient belonging to Kandahar city of Afghanistan was brought to a private hospital in Quetta in a serious condition. He was suffering from Congo fever,” hospital sources told Dawn on Friday.

They said that senior surgeon Dr Ayaz Mandokhail and operation theatre technician Imran Ahmed operated upon the patient. As a result, they contracted the disease.

Dr Ayaz fell unconscious in the operation theatre and was immediately taken to Karachi and Imran was admitted to an isolation ward of the Fatima Jinnah Hospital in Quetta.

The sources said that three patients suffering from the Congo virus had been brought to the hospital. One belonged to Kandahar and two others were locals, including a child.

Doctors at the hospital said that Congo virus often depressed the platelet count in patients from 350,000 to only 30,000.

A health department official said that about 350 Congo virus cases had been reported in the province over the past 10 years.

Known as Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) or simply as Congo fever, the disease was first reported in Crimea in 1944 and given the name Crimean haemorrhagic fever.

However, in 1969 it was recognised that the pathogen causing the Crimean haemorrhagic fever was the same as that responsible for an illness identified in 1956 in Congo and linkage of the two places’ names resulted in the current name for the disease and the virus.

The CCHF is a severe disease in humans, with a high mortality rate. Fortunately, human illness occurs infrequently, although animal infection may be more common.