Ministry of Health confirms that a 47 year old man died from leptospirosis

Michael Pitts

Earlier we reported that a twenty-nine year old mother, Shahira Bodden had died due to the H-one N-one influenza. Another disease that has been detected in Belize is Leptospirosis. And according to the Ministry of Health, it has caused the death of a forty-seven year old resident of Belize City. The only other death recorded was back in 2000, when Hurricane Keith struck Belize.

Dr. Michael Pitts, Director of Medical Services

“Over the Christmas Holidays, we did have a young man who came in and died, succumbed to leptospirosis. We had from our initial screen that we have as positive, but again we sent to CARPHA to get confirmation. Leptospirosis is not a new disease in Belize. Tropical country, Doctor Murray, who studied in Cuba, would tell you that was a big issue in Cuba. Leptospirosis, historically we used to see it more in rural areas and certainly the agricultural belt. Over the last five years, we have seen a number of cases in Belize. It was back during Keith hurricane that we had seen one death in Belize City from Leptospirosis and so far we have had only one death that we can attribute to lepton and I think the clinical pattern fit the leptospirosis. Leptospirosis, for us, is related to rats; rat infestation. So it is a combination of housing condition, environmental condition, garbage, water, etc.  So in terms of response for this case, we isolated it to a particular area of Belize and we are working with the City Council right now to do cleanup campaign in that area in terms of removing refuse. And our public health inspectors have been distributing rodenticides into that area of the population.”