Child contracts uncommon lethal illness after swimming in UK river | UK | News | EUROtoday

A baby contracted the uncommon probably lethal an infection Weil’s illness after going swimming in a river, a council has confirmed.

Dedham Parish Council in Essex stated the native scholar “suffered a severe infection after swimming in the River Stour at Dedham, and has been very poorly”.

In a letter printed on its web site, the authority stated it was a “confirmed case of Weil’s disease (leptospirosis) which can be very serious”.

The illness is unfold within the urine of contaminated animals, mostly rats, mice, cows, pigs and canines. In excessive circumstances it might probably trigger loss of life for round 5 p.c of those that contract the an infection.

People could be contaminated by Weil’s illness if soil or freshwater, comparable to water from a river, that incorporates tainted urine that will get of their mouth, eyes or a lower.

Most individuals who endure Weil’s illness don’t have any signs or gentle flu-like signs, however some individuals get significantly unwell, with round 5 p.c dying, in accordance with figures for England and Wales.

Symptoms might embrace excessive temperature, headache, physique aches and ache, abdomen ache, feeling or being sick, diarrhoea, redness within the white a part of your eyes and yellowing of the pores and skin or white a part of the eyes.

People who might have been uncovered to contaminated urine and are displaying signs are suggested to see a GP.

The River Stour straddles the Suffolk and Essex border and has been painted by the artists John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough.

Dedham Parish Council stated the Environment Agency is enterprise monitoring within the river at Dedham.

The Environment Agency stated it undertakes routine sampling at a number of websites alongside the Stour for “bathing water purposes”, together with at Dedham Bridge and Flatford Mill.

It stated that its newest samples “do not suggest any water quality issues at these sites”.

It added it was the “responsibility of the local authority to display any required advisory notices against entering waterways due to public health risks”.

The parish council added that native environmental group Pace (Practical Actions for Climate and the Environment) Manningtree is “investigating the impact of untreated sewage released into the river by the sewage works at Dedham”.

The case comes amid rising anger over the polluted state of England’s rivers and coasts.

The council stated it wished to warn, “in addition to the risks of Weil’s disease and pollution”, of a number of different “serious safety concerns” a few website on the river at Mill Lane.

These embrace a report {that a} younger boy “gashed his foot open” final weekend, with litter together with glass bottles and cans frequently left within the space and posing a hazard.

There are additionally studies of metalwork beneath a bridge the place many youngsters soar from, and the place the water could be “dangerously shallow”.

Meanwhile, round 16,000 households and companies within the Brixham space of Devon have been informed to not use their faucet water for ingesting with out boiling and cooling it first as a result of a lot of confirmed circumstances of a waterborne illness attributable to a microscopic parasite.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) stated final week that 46 circumstances of cryptosporidium had been confirmed and that extra circumstances had been anticipated.