Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is a tick-borne viral disease causing fever, muscle pain, headache, vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding into the skin, with onset within two weeks of exposure and possible complications including liver failure, and recovery generally taking about two weeks once symptoms begin. It is caused by the CCHF virus, first detected in the 1940s among Soviet troops in Crimea and later found in the 1960s in Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo, work that led the two outbreaks to be recognized as one disease. It spreads through tick bites or contact with the blood and body fluids of infected people or animals, putting farmers and slaughterhouse workers especially at risk, and there is no approved treatment or commercial vaccine, though the antiviral ribavirin is often used despite limited evidence of its effectiveness.