Deaths in southwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to an as yet unidentified disease continues to escalate. So far, 71 deaths have been confirmed, of which 27 were reported in hospitals and 44 in communities in the southern province of Kwango. The World Health Organization (WHO) sent a team of experts into the field to collect samples and conduct laboratory tests to identify the pathogen responsible.
Test results should be available today or tomorrow, Jean Kaseya, head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference today. “Preliminary diagnoses suggest it is a respiratory disease, but we need to wait for the laboratory test results.” Of the patients hospitalized, 17 were for breathing problems. Kaseya emphasized that many aspects of the disease are still unknown, including whether it is contagious and how it is transmitted. It is believed that around 380 cases have been identified so far, almost half of which involved children under 5 years of age.
People infected with the mystery disease develop flu-like symptoms such as cough, vomiting, “high fever and severe headaches,” said Remy Saki, deputy governor of Kwango province, and Apollinaire Yumba, DRC provincial health minister. Reuters. The authorities are there calling on citizens be careful and avoid contact with corpses to avoid potential infection. However, the number of infected people continues to rise, as does the alert level.
This area of the DRC is very breakable from a health perspective – 40 percent of residents suffer from malnutrition, and for many of them access to medical care is tough due to shortages of medicines. This up-to-date epidemic coincides with the DRC’s struggles with the mpox epidemic, which was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the WHO in August.
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italy and was translated from Italian.