The body of a South African businessman who died of a mysterious hemorrhagic disease days after arriving in Brazil has been cremated by a special decontamination team in Rio de Janeiro, officials said on Friday.

The incineration took place late on Thursday. Firemen wearing hermetically sealed suits spread chemical products around the high-security area as a "preventive" measure, the state's health ministry said in a statement.

An urn containing the ashes of the 53-year-old man, whose name was not given, was transported to a foreign ministry building in Rio pending arrangements to fly it to South Africa.

The body of the man was originally to have been repatriated in a sealed metal coffin, but plans were changed after medics struggled to identify the illness that killed him.

Brazilian doctors said they suspected an arena virus, a highly contagious group of viruses that includes Lassa fever, an infection endemic to west Africa that typically spreads to humans from proximity to rodents or from infected people's secretions.

They noted that he had undergone surgery in mid-October at a Johannesburg hospital which treated several cases of a new arenavirus strain which killed four people.

But South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases, working with the Brazilian authorities, said it was unlikely the man had been infected with the same virus. It said he did not have contact with any of the patients who had the arenavirus infection in the hospital.

The South African man had arrived in Brazil on 23 November to attend business conferences.

He went to hospital two days later suffering fever, vomiting, blood in his urine and rashes. His condition worsened and he died on Tuesday this week.

Dengue, malaria and Ebola had all been ruled out, Rio's health ministry said.

Results from blood samples taken from the man will be known early next week.

The 75 people who had been in contact with the deceased South African were being monitored but so far had shown no symptoms of infection.

AFP