Over 50 people killed, over 400 patients with mystery disease in Congo

Kinshasa, Congo (AP) – Unidentified diseases in the north -west Congo They killed more than 50 people in the last five weeks, almost half of them in a few hours after they felt sick.

The outbreaks of two distant villages in the province of Equiteur Congo started on January 21 and include 419 cases and 53 deaths. Health officials do not yet know the case or if the cases in the two villages, which are separated by more than 120 miles (190 kilometers), are linked. Also, it is not clear how the diseases spread, including if they spread between people.

The first victims of one of the villages were the children who ate a bat and died in 48 hours, this week said the Africa office of the World Health Organization. Several infections were found in the other village, where at least some patients have malaria.

Outbreaks in two distant villages

The diseases were grouped into two distant villages in different health areas of the fair province, which are 400 miles (640 kilometers) by Kinshasa.

The first outbreak started in the village of Boloko after three children ate a bat and died in 48 hours. For more than two weeks later, a second and larger outbreak was recorded in the village of Bomate, where over 400 people got sick. According to WHO Africa office, no links were established between the cases in the two villages.

Dr. Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro Hospital, a regional monitoring center and one of the government experts to respond to the outbreak, says that the situations in the two villages are somewhat different.

“The first with a lot of deaths, which we continue to investigate, because it is an unusual (and) situation in the second episode with which we have to do, we see a lot of malaria,” said Dr. Ngalebato.

The OMS Africa office said that rapid progression from death to death in Boloko is an essential concern, along with the large number of deaths in bombs.

What are the symptoms?

The Ministry of Health of Congo said that about 80% of patients have similar symptoms, including fever, chills, body pain and diarrhea.

While these symptoms can be caused by many common infections, health officials were initially afraid of symptoms, and the rapid deaths of some of the victims could also be a sign of the hemorrhagic fever, such as Ebola, which was also linked to an infected animal.

However, ebola and similar diseases, including Marburg, were excluded after more than a dozen evidence in the Kinshasa capital were collected and tested.

WHO said they are investigating a number of possible causes, including malaria, viral hemorrhagic fever, food poisoning or water, typhoid and meningitis.

What is done in response?

The Congo government says experts have been sent to villages since February 14, mainly to help investigate cases and slow down.

Ngalebato said that patients responded to treatments targeting different symptoms.

The distant location of the villages prevented access to patients, while the weak health care infrastructure made it difficult to supervise and manage patients. Such challenges are common in congo disease outbreaks. In DecemberAn unknown disease killed dozens.

In the latest outbreaks, several victims died just before the experts could reach them, said Ngalebato.

There must be an urgent action “to accelerate laboratory investigations, to improve the capacities of cases and isolation and to strengthen the supervision and communication of the risks,” said WHO Africa office.

The US was the largest bilateral donor in the Congo health sector and supported the preparation of hundreds of field epidemiologists to help detect and control diseases from all over the vast country. The outbreaks were detected while the Trump administration has been freezing the external aid during a 90 -day analysis.

Is there a connection with Congo’s forests?

There have been a long time concern Diseases jumping from animals to humans In places where people regularly eat wild animals. The number of such outbreaks in Africa has increased by more than 60% in the last decade, the WHO said in 2022.

Experts say it could be what is happening in Congo, which houses about 60% of the forests in the Congo basin, which houses the largest stretch of the tropical forest on Earth.

“All these viruses are viruses who have tanks in the forest. And so, as long as we have these forests, we will always have a few epidemics with viruses that will move, “said Gabriel Nsakala, a public health professor at the National Pedagogical University, who previously worked at the Ministry of Congolese Health on Ebola and Coronavirus response programs.

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