Morocco may have first human mad cow death

The Moroccan government said on Thursday it believes a man died of the human form of mad cow disease, which is suspected to be the first case of its kind in the North African country.

The 61-year-old was a regular visitor to Europe, the health ministry said in a statement, without saying which country. He died on Wednesday in a Casablanca hospital.

"We are not 100 percent sure as we are still carrying out checks through samples, but it's highly possible he died of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)," a senior ministry official told AMN Health.

A little more than 150 cases of vCJD have been reported in the world up to now, most of them in Britain.

The brain-wasting disease is fatal and incurable. It is thought to be caused by eating meat from cattle infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, which is a progressive neurological disorder.

Some two million Moroccan expatriates live in Europe, and Morocco is a big importer of European-origin food products, including meat and cereals, mostly from the European Union.