A mother of five succumbed on Tuesday night to symptoms of leptospirosis just four days after being admitted to the public hospital.

Jesmin Ramkissoon, 58, of Better Hope South, East Coast Demerara would be the first woman to have died from the disease which has already been linked to the deaths of seventeen men.

Relatives thought her death unlikely as her recovery seemed guaranteed during their recent visits to the hospital where the woman was receiving treatment for the bacterial disease.

Leptospirosis can be contracted by contact with water contaminated by bacteria from animal waste. Patients sometimes appear to be recovering but then relapse into the more serious form of the illness.

Dilip Ramkissoon believes that his wife contracted the disease one week ago when she injured her right leg while wading in floodwater that overwhelmed the low-lying area up to the start of last week.

But he and other relatives feel that had they known earlier about the disease and its causes her life might have been saved. This statement has been echoed by the relatives of others who have died.

Nearly everyone in the village was talking about the woman's death while a small black flag was flying at her home.

Dilip Ramkissoon said last Tuesday in the midst of the flood his wife ventured out to check a report that they had received about water seeping into the family's minibus parked a corner away.

At the time the water in the low-lying section of the village stood between three to four feet.

But while she was wading through the murky water she fell into a hole in which she punctured her right shin.

Little was thought of it but in the two days that followed the woman developed a fever accompanied by vomiting and diarrhoea.

"She said she could walk and she never get back up since then," Dolly Jainarine, her sister, said yesterday, adding that the woman was unable to sleep at night and would scream because of the pain.

The family took her to the Georgetown Hospital early the next morning but the hospital staff were slow to react with scores of others with similar complaints also waiting for treatment, she explained, saying that while they took her about 8 am she was only admitted as a patient about 6 pm.

She added that they never expected her sister to die as she seemed to improve after she was admitted.

"Last night when we went to look in on her she was talking good, laughing and everything. We didn't expect her to die like that," Jainarine said yesterday.

But they wished they had known more about the disease then they might have been able to get treatment earlier.

"We never know that the virus could have penetrated the puncture," Dilip Ramkissoon reflected.

The family is awaiting a conclusive diagnosis from the post-mortem before burying her.