Claude Wilson, Gleaner Writer
CHARLENE SINGH, who in late 2002 was diagnosed with the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a variant of the dreaded mad cow disease, died in the United States on June 20 after a tortuous three-year battle with the disease.
"Her body couldn't take it any more," said Singh's aunt, Sharon Singh-Passley. "It's shocking and stunning."
Health officials concluded that the Florida resident had contracted the disease when she lived in England where she was born of Jamaican parentage, and from which she moved to the United States in 1992. According to reports of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and the Florida Department of Health, Ms. Singh became the first and only U.S. resident to succumb to the mad cow disease variant.
Ms. Singh, 25, died in her sleep, her aunt said.
Definitive diagnosis could not have been possible until after death but now after more than six weeks, the autopsy reports are yet to reach Singh's family.
NO PATHOLOGY REPORTS
"We have not yet received any pathology reports on Charlene. I contacted the CDC... to enquire about its status but still we have not had the report," Sharon Singh Passley told The Gleaner.
Cable News Network (CNN) first reported Ms. Singh's story in October 2002 when doctors told family members that she had symptoms of the CJD and gave her only a few months to live.
But on seeing the news report, a doctor offered experimental treatment that the family felt helped her to live beyond the limited expectations of the earlier doctors.
Young, vibrant and sharp in mind until November 2001, Singh-Passley said Charlene began to forget things and lose her temper so doctors prescribed antidepressants; but her condition continued to decline.
Her father, Patrick Singh adds, "Her hand began to shake pretty rapidly. We decided this couldn't be depression. Depression doesn't make your hand shake. It doesn't make you walk and stumble."
Dissatisfied with the diagnosis from the American physicians, Carlene's mother, Allison Singh, took her to England in early 2003, where she was first diagnosed with the incurable disease, the human form of the brain-wasting disease found in cows, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).
