HONG KONG - Hong Kong's Hospital Authority has said that a 23-year-old UK born man, who came to Hong Kong in April is being monitored for suspected human variant of mad cow disease. The Centre for Health Protection and the Hospital Authority said the man was admitted to Kwong Wah Hospital on April 6. He was mentally unstable and was behaving oddly.
The man is thought to be suffering from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or mad cow disease found in humans, but so far a battery of tests have proved inconclusive. Authorities say they cannot confirm that he is indeed suffering from the disease. The man is in critical condition and is currently undergoing treatment at Prince of Wales Hospital. Earlier the man underwent intestinal surgery as well.
Hospital Authority spokeswoman May Chan refused to divulge if the man was ethnic Chinese, but said they were not aware of his hometown in the UK.
Mad cow disease also called bovine spongiform encephalopathy is a prion disease, which is transmitted to humans by eating infected beef or dairy products. It is a degenerative disease of the nerves that is always fatal and there is no known cure for it.
In 1990s a variant of the disease caused havoc in Britain and resulted in over 150 deaths. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the median age for death from the disease is 28 years.
