Health Minister: No room for panic about West Nile virus

ZAGREB, Sept 6 (Hina) - Commenting on information released by the Croatian Public Health Institute that a patient hospitalised in Slavonski Brod was most probably infected by the West Nile virus, Health Minister Rajko Ostojic said on Thursday that Croatian citizens had no reason to panic and that the condition of the patient in Slavonski Brod was stable.

We are still waiting for the test results from Zagreb which are expected to confirm whether or not the patient in Slavosnki Brod has been infected, Ostojic told Nova TV commercial television.

He stressed there was no room for panic as the virus cannot be transferred from one human to another.

First discovered in Uganda in 1937, the virus is carried by birds and spread to humans by mosquitoes.

There is no known cure for the disease, but 80 percent of infected people develop few or no symptoms.