A mysterious illness with flu-like symptoms has killed dozens of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to that country’s health authorities.
The unidentified disease killed 79 people and sickened 376 as of Tuesday, according to the country’s Ministry of Public Health, Hygiene and Social Security.
In a statement onAccording to the ministry, the disease was “of still unknown origin” and had been detected in Kwango province, in southwestern Congo.
Reported symptoms include fever, headache, nasal congestion, cough, difficulty breathing and anemia.
Local authorities said Reuters And The Associated Press that the death toll could reach 143.
The Health Ministry said the remains of anyone who died after showing similar symptoms should not be handled without the involvement of authorized health authorities, and it asked people to report any suspicious illnesses or unusual deaths. The office also advised people to avoid mass gatherings and follow basic hygiene rules, including washing their hands with soap and water.
Emergency public health officials were dispatched to the area, according to the ministry.
The World Health Organization told NBC News it was aware of reports of an unidentified illness and was working with local authorities.
“We sent a team to the remote area to collect samples for laboratory analysis,” WHO spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said in an email.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has an office in Congo, said it was aware of the situation and was providing technical assistance to a rapid response team dispatched from a local emergency center. emergency operations.
Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has worked in Congo since 2002, said diagnosing these illnesses could be complicated due to limited health care infrastructure and underlying health problems among part of the population, notably malaria and malnutrition. .
“I think it’s really important to be aware of what’s going on, and I think it’s also really important not to panic until we have more information,” he said. she declared.
“It could be anything,” she added. “It could be the flu, it could be Ebola, it could be Marburg, it could be meningitis, it could be measles. At this point, we really don’t know.
Dr. Abraar Karan, an infectious disease physician at Stanford Medicine, said the outbreak “sounds alarm bells” because of its location. Interactions between humans and wildlife in Congo increase the risk of a pathogen spreading from animals, he said, and “many animal infections that spread from animals to humans can cause quite serious illnesses.
To identify the disease, Karan explained, local health authorities will first screen for common illnesses like the flu or malaria, before testing for less common pathogens. If all these tests are negative, authorities can genetically sequence the tissues, blood, mucus or bone marrow of infected people, he explained.
At the same time, international teams on the ground will collect information on risk factors common to sick people and who they have been in contact with, said Amira Albert Roess, professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University.
“I think we’ll start to have an answer very quickly as to what this is about,” Roess said, noting that there have been “a lot of deaths, especially in such a short period of time, with the same types of symptoms”. »