21st death from new CJD strain

04 August 1997

21st death from new CJD strain

Susan Carey, 36, has been named as the 21st person to die from the new strain of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

She died in March, at her home, near Rochester, Kent. Confirmation of the diagnosis has just been made.

A key question under consideration is whether the infection could have occurred between 1985 and 1987. That was when her husband was a farm worker on the estate of Lord Brabourne, at Mersham, near Ashford. Ashford is at the centre of one of the biggest clusters of bovine spongiform encephalopathy-related deaths in Britain.

Glasgows Southern General Hospital confirmed it had been treating 15-year-old Donna-Marie McGivern, from Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire. Infection can only be confirmed after death.