According to health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, dozens of people have died from an enigmatic illness that resembles the flu.
As of Tuesday, the nation’s Ministry of Public Health, Hygiene, and Social Security reported that the unnamed disease has killed 79 individuals and sickened 376.
The ministry said in a statement on X that the sickness was discovered in the southwestern Congo’s Kwango province and that its origin was yet unclear.
Fever, headache, congestion of the nose, cough, dyspnea, and anemia are among the symptoms that have been reported.
According to local officials, the death toll could reach 143, as reported by Reuters and the Associated Press.
In addition to asking people to report any suspicious illnesses or unexpected deaths, the health ministry stated that the remains of anyone who passed away after exhibiting similar symptoms should not be handled without the assistance of authorized health officials. The office also suggested that people stay away from large crowds and follow basic hygiene guidelines, such as washing their hands with soap and water.
According to the ministry, emergency public health officials have been sent to the area.
The World Health Organization is collaborating with local authorities and is aware of reports of an unnamed sickness, the organization informed NBC News.
In an email, WHO spokeswoman Tarik Ja arevi stated, “We have sent a team to the remote area to collect samples for lab investigations.”
A fast reaction team sent by a local emergency operations center is receiving technical assistance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which maintains an office in Congo and is aware of the problem.
According to Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist from the University of California, Los Angeles who has been working in Congo since 2002, the lack of adequate health care infrastructure and the fact that some of the population suffers from underlying medical conditions like malaria and malnutrition may make it more difficult to diagnose the illnesses.
I believe it’s incredibly important to know what’s going on, but I also think it’s really necessary to wait for further information before panicking,” she said.
“Anything could be it,” she continued. “There are several possible causes, including measles, influenza, Ebola, Marburg, and meningitis. We simply don’t know at this time.
According to Stanford Medicine infectious disease specialist Dr. Abraar Karan, the outbreak’s location does raise concerns. According to him, human-wildlife interactions in Congo raise the possibility of a pathogen spreading from animals to people, and many animal illnesses that spread from animals to people can result in quite serious illness.
Before testing for less common diseases, local health experts will first screen for common ailments like malaria or the flu in order to identify the condition, according to Karan. Officials may genetically sequence bone marrow, mucous, tissue, or blood from sick individuals if all of those tests come back negative, he said.
According to Amira Albert Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University, international teams on the ground would simultaneously gather data about the risk factors that sick people have shared and the people they have interacted with.
“I think pretty quickly we’ll start to have an answer as to what this is,” Roess said, adding that many fatalities have occurred with the same kinds of symptoms, particularly in such a short period of time.
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