Risk of Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever among healthcare workers

Abstract number: R2219

Bulut C., Yilmaz G.R., Karakoç E., Önde U., Koçak Tufan Z., Demiröz A.P.

Objectives: Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a potentially fatal disease. The disease caused by a virus belonging to Bunyaviridae family. CCHF has been reported from more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia, south-eastern Europe, and the Middle East. The disease has been seen since 2002 in middle and east of Turkey. The number of patients is getting increase by years. The main transmission routes of the virus are tick-bite and contact with tissues, body fluids and blood of infected animals. Contact with a patient's blood or excretion is another route of transmission. The aim of this study was to investigate seroprevalence of CCHF in health care worker (HCW) of three hospitals which in CCHF patients were hospitalised and followed up.

Methods: This study was executed in Ankara Training and Research Hospital, Kastamonu State Hospital and Corum State Hospital. The sera of the HCWs' who are working in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology, emergency and laboratory departments of these hospitals were tested. A questionnaire was fulfilled for each HCW. Presence of CCHF IgG was investigated in the sera samples by ELISA (Vectocrimean-CHF-IgG, Bectop, Russia).

Results: Totally 90 HCWs were included in the study. Thirty-eight (43.2%), 31 (35.2%) and 21 (23.9%) HCWs were from Corum State Hospital, Kastamonu State Hospital and Ankara Training and Research Hospital, respectively. Distribution of the profession of the HCW's was as follow: 41(46.5%), nurses 18 (20.5%) physicians, 11 (12.5%) laboratory technician and 18 (20.5%) other. Forty-seven (52%) HCWs were from Infectious and Clinical Microbiology Department, 34 (38%) were from emergency department, 9 (10%) were from laboratory. Needle-stick injury was detected in two HCWs, both of them had received ribavirin prophylaxis. They were negative for CCHF IgG. One sera sample was found as positive for CCHF IgG. This HCW was working in blood-draw department and he had a history of contact with blood and needle-stick injury. He had no symptoms or clinical findings of CCHF.

Conclusion: In the literature, CCHF outbreaks by nosocomial transmission have been reported. In Turkey, there have been eight reported cases between 2002 and June 2008. One of them was died. We found a low rate of seropositivity in HCWs (1%) in endemic regions. This might be related to compliance with application of standard control measures.