South African minister says no madcow disease reported

JOHANNESBURG, Africa (Reuters) -- South Africa's Agricultural Ministry said on Sunday it had not received any notification of the death of a woman who two newspaper reports said might have died from mad cow disease although she had never been overseas.

"Neither the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs nor the Department of Health has received any notification on the death of a woman...allegedly caused by mad cow disease," Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza said in a statement.

"No case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) has ever been diagnosed in South Africa," she said.

"Rumors of this nature only cause unnecessary concern amongst consumers and our trade partners," she added.

South Africa's Sunday Independent newspaper quoted the husband of a woman who died in June as saying she had been diagnosed as suffering from new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human form of the mad cow brain-wasting disease.

It quoted Ken Eckard, a 37-year-old electrician from the town of Rustenburg 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, as saying his wife Ronel died on June 22 after being diagnosed with vCJD.

The Sunday Times newspaper quoted her doctor Ben Makgale as saying she could have died of mad cow disease but this had not yet been proven conclusively.

"There could be a link but we can't say for sure. We have to prove it beyond doubt," Makgale told the newspaper.

The Sunday Times said a copy of the pathology report it had obtained said Eckard died of "spongiform encephalitis appearing to suggest CJD."

But it said the report did not state whether this referred to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) or new variant CJD. Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a very rare brain wasting disease that usually affects older people in their 60s or 70s and is different from new variant CJD.

The Sunday Independent said the case had been reported to health authorities in June but had not yet been made public.

"Because mad cow disease is a notifiable disease, the health authorities were notified. But no one has contacted me or tried to find out where my wife may have contracted the disease. She has never travelled overseas," the paper quoted Eckard as saying.

Evidence of mad cow disease in South Africa could deal a crippling blow to the country's beef industry.

Several countries have already slapped bans on South African meat imports in the wake of a foot-and-mouth outbreak among cloven-hoofed animals.

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