Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said Sunday that the bacterial disease was spread by flooding caused by a month of intense rains and category-5 Hurricane Felix. Felix hit northeastern Nicaragua last month.
Lt. Col. Guillermo Lopez, deputy chief of the country's Civil Defense Department told the AP that as of midday Monday, nine people had died of the disease and 1,606 people had fallen ill.
The highest number of cases, 745, appeared in the northwestern city of Somotillo, Lopez added.
Leptospirosis, also known as Weil's disease, canicola fever or canefield fever is a bacterial disease caused by spirochaetes of the genus Leptospira that affects humans and a wide range of animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles.
In human, leptospiral infection causes a wide range of symptoms, and some infected persons may have no symptoms at all. Leptospirosis is a biphasic disease that begins with flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, myalgias, intense headache).
The first phase resolves and the patient is asymptomatic briefly before the second phase begins that is characterized by meningitis, liver damage (causing jaundice), and renal failure.
Because of the wide range of symptoms the infection is often wrongly diagnosed. This leads to a lower registered number of cases than there really are.
Symptoms of leptospirosis include high fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches, and vomiting, and may include jaundice, red eyes, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and/or a rash. The symptoms in humans appear after 4-14 day incubation period.
