Meet Quentin Church, a rugby union stalwart in Australia who was struck down
with cutaneous anthrax – the skin form of the disease that surfaced in New
York yesterday.
Church, who is originally from Oamaru in New Zealand, survived the hideous anthrax germs that millions of people worldwide now fear.
Yesterday, he spoke for the first time of how anthrax nearly took his life in 1998, when he was a strapping 20-year-old rugby player with the Easts colts team at Coorparoo in Brisbane, Australia. He also spoke of his passionate hope that germ warfare was never used as a weapon of mass murder by terrorists.
Church became the first victim of anthrax in the Australian State of Queensland in 62 years. His history-making case puzzled health authorities and never was solved.
After Church was diagnosed, health authorities quietly assembled a team of investigators who went about testing the soil at the Easts rugby grounds and Hessian-wrapped bales of cotton at a Brisbane warehouse where Church was employed as a fork-lift driver.
Under cloak of secrecy, some of Church’s workmates and members of Easts sought medical advice, fearing wider contamination. No other cases were confirmed.
Church’s anthrax nightmare began Friday, July 17, 1998, when he noticed what seemed to be a massive bee sting on his hip “the size of a dinner plate.” Being a hardened type, he went about life the next day playing two games of rugby, one with the Easts colts and another with the thirds before a life-saving dash to the hospital after his symptoms suddenly accelerated.
He said the onset, including large areas of inflamed skin, nausea and a numbness all over his body, was so rapid that had he not sought treatment that night, he would have died within hours.
“They told me if I had been two hours later, they would have taken off my leg. And if I’d gone home and left it eight hours, I would have been dead,” he said.
In the hospital, just hours after being a force on the field, Church was weak and fighting for his life.
“By the next morning, I was really crook, I was weak. The anthrax had come up like a big blister, a big burn. … I had lost all the feeling in my body. I thought I was going to die. I was panicking.”
An Australian federal Department of Health report confirms how ill he was. It said the inflammation and hardening of the skin had spread from Church’s abdomen down his leg, and a 1 cm. lump in just 24 hours grew into a 10 cm. region of inflamed, blistered skin. He was fed intravenous antibiotics to survive.
Church said he had three operations, including skin grafts. He spent three weeks in the hospital and was away from work for five months. He had been left with extensive scarring.
It is something he prays the people of the world never experienced: “I feel very lucky to be alive. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”
The Australian Department of Health report said Church had been stricken with cutaneous anthrax – contracted through his skin, rather than by inhalation. But despite their extensive and mainly secretive investigative, authorities could not confirm how he got it.
They did find that Church had been exposed at work to new, imported Hessian material used in the repackaging of Australian ginned cotton and to fertilizers, but these were chemically based.
“In particular, there was no history of animal exposure, no use of blood and bone fertilizers on the football fields, and no exposure to imported animal products in the home.”
Church said he had been unable to sue for compensation as nobody was found to be responsible. He said he was disappointed at the investigation, which analyzed only 62
samples at the warehouse.
Church’s uncle, Allan Church, said his nephew played first-class rugby in
New Zealand when he was just 16, and had been nominated for the New Zealand
Maoris when he was 18 before he moved to Australia to further his rugby career.
Quentin Church then played for the Harlequins at Bathurst in New South Wales, and at 23 was “on his way to a very substantial rugby career if injury doesn’t stop him.”
Allan Church said details of the 1998 investigation had been kept quiet in Australia because “most people seemed pretty scared about what was going on.”
Church’s former coach, Grant Batty, said the Health Department had assured the club anthrax was very unusual. Australia’s acting chief medical officer, Professor John Mathews, said Australia’s preparedness for a biological incident such as anthrax was greatly increased before the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Human anthrax is a rare disease in Australia. From 1917 to 1991, the average notification rate was 8 for every 10 million people. Most cases in Australia in the last 50 years have been related to animal outbreaks in the endemic areas in Victoria and New South Wales.
The previously last reported human case of anthrax in the State of Queensland was in 1939, and in Australia in 1997.
Copyright 2001, The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Australia
