The Ja­maica gov­ern­ment Fri­day con­firmed an out­break of lep­tospiro­sis with health au­thor­i­ties say­ing that six peo­ple have so far died as a re­sult.

“The out­break fol­lows the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa which has cre­at­ed con­di­tions that have in­creased the risk of ex­po­sure to con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter and soil,” Health and Well­ness Min­is­ter Dr. Christo­pher Tufton told a news con­fer­ence, adding that there has al­so been a rise in con­firmed and sus­pect­ed cas­es across eight parish­es.

Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa hit Ja­maica on Oc­to­ber 28 caus­ing wide­spread dam­age, main­ly to the west­ern sec­tion of the is­land. At least 42 peo­ple have died and 15 are miss­ing. The dam­age is es­ti­mat­ed at near­ly nine bil­lion US dol­lars.

Lep­tospiro­sis symp­toms of­ten start with flu-like symp­toms, in­clud­ing fever, headache, chills, mus­cle aches and red eyes. Some peo­ple may al­so ex­pe­ri­ence vom­it­ing, di­ar­rhea, or a rash. In more se­vere cas­es, the ill­ness can progress to a sec­ond phase with se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions like kid­ney fail­ure, liv­er fail­ure, jaun­dice, and menin­gi­tis, and can be fa­tal.

Tufton told re­porters that there have been nine con­firmed cas­es, 28 sus­pect­ed cas­es, across the parish­es of St. Eliz­a­beth, St. Cather­ine, Hanover, West­more­land, Trelawny, St. Ann, St. James and St. Mary and six sus­pect­ed deaths be­tween Oc­to­ber 30 and No­vem­ber 20.

He said lep­tospiro­sis is a “sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic health risk” and the bac­te­ria that caus­es the dis­ease strives in wa­ter that has been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by in­fect­ed an­i­mals, es­pe­cial­ly rats, but al­so cats, dogs and live­stock.

“Lep­tospiro­sis can af­fect any­one who comes in­to con­tact with con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter, soil or mud and that in­cludes farm­ers and per­sons who en­gage in clean up ac­tiv­i­ties, emer­gency re­spon­ders and oth­ers nav­i­gat­ing flood ar­eas.”

He said that the meet­ing with his team on Thurs­day night con­firmed the nine cas­es as well as the 28 sus­pect­ed ones.

“The num­bers re­flect sig­nif­i­cant­ly more cas­es than the two to 21 cas­es ob­served in the pre­ced­ing 34 months There have been six deaths among the sus­pect­ed cas­es. There are no deaths from among the con­firmed and prob­a­ble cas­es at this time,” Tufton added.