[A man with fatal Lassa fever following a stay in Sierra Leone]

A 48-year-old-man returned to the Netherlands from Sierra Leone and was admitted with nausea, crampy abdominal pain, myalgia, arthralgia, headache and watery diarrhoea. This was the first case of Lassa fever diagnosed in the Netherlands since 1980. Despite treatment with ribavirin, the patient died on the 16th day of illness. Prompt diagnosis of Lassa fever is critical for the timely administration of ribavirin which improves diagnosis considerably, and for the timely implementation of isolation measures. Recently, a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has become available for the rapid diagnosis of acute Lassa fever, which was implemented to diagnose this patient.