Serge Ngalebato, the medical director of the Bikoro Hospital, a regional monitoring centre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the situation was “really worrying”
Doctors have raised the alarm over a “really worrying” unidentified deadly illness that has kills in a matter of hours.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has reported more than 50 deaths in the north-west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from an unknown disease that quickly causes symptoms. WHO doctors on the ground in the African nation have treated hundreds of cases and found a small, two-day interval between the onset of symptoms and deaths.
Serge Ngalebato, medical director of the Bikoro Hospital, a regional monitoring centre, said in a statement following the concerning discovery that the relatively small window between symptoms and death is “really worrying”. The outbreak, the WHO warns, may be the result of another virus jumping the barrier from humans to animals.
The WHO said the outbreak began just over a month ago on January 21, and that 419 cases have been recorded between then and mid-February. Of the more than 400 people who have caught the disease since then, 53 people have died, a roughly 12.49 percent fatality rate – sky high compared to diseases like Covid, which comes with a 3.14 percent fatality rate.
According to the WHO’s Africa office, the first outbreak in the town of Boloko began after three children had eaten a bat and died within 48 hours following haemorrhagic fever symptoms. There have long been concerns about diseases jumping from animals to humans in places where wild animals are popularly eaten.
The number of such outbreaks in Africa has surged by more than 60 percent in the last decade, the WHO said in 2022. After the second outbreak of the current mystery disease began in the town of Bomate on February 9, samples from 13 cases have been sent to the National Institute for Biomedical Research in the capital, Kinshasa, for testing, the WHO said.
All samples have been negative for Ebola or other common haemorrhagic fever diseases such as Marburg. Some tested positive for malaria. Last year, another mystery flu-like illness that killed dozens of people in another part of the country was determined to be likely malaria
