Lots of questions and still few answers. An unidentified illness killed dozens of people and infected hundreds in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported. For the moment, preliminary investigations bring the epidemic to three children who, in January, ate a bat and are dead. “The link with a bat can be significant, because we know that the viruses present in these animals cause a number of other diseases in humans,” underline our colleagues from New York Times.
Fifty-three people died from the disease that would have broken out in two separate villages from the province of the Ecuador, out of 431 cases reported on February 15. “Almost half of the deaths occurred within 48 hours of the appearance of symptoms,” explains a weekly bulletin published by the WHO Africa Bureau and dating from February 16. “The epidemic, which has seen the cases increase rapidly in a few days, constitutes an important threat to public health”, indicates the report, which specifies that “the exact cause remains unknown”, while excluding the Ebola virus or that of Marburg.
The Congolese Ministry of Health said that around 80 % of patients shared similar symptoms, including fever, chills, aches and diarrhea. Children who perished because of the disease had also bled with the nose and vomit of blood. The mortality rate of this disease is 12.3 %, according to international health agencies.
But should we start to worry? In the Washington Post,, Michael Head, principal researcher in global health at the University of Southampton in Great Britain, wants to be reassuring: “Epidemics of unknown or non-identified diseases will occur several times in the world […] A truly new disease, as we have seen with the COVVI-19, can of course occur, but it is very rare “.” In general, it is a microbe that we know but that we have not yet diagnosed in this particular home, “he continues.
Not the first unknown disease
Already the December 8the WHO was worried about the spread of another unknown pseudo-grippal disease which killed dozens of people in the southwest region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It particularly touched the youngest, 40 % of cases concerning children under the age of 5, with symptoms close to those of a flu: fever, cough and headache. Investigators later determined that these were probably acute respiratory infections complicated by malaria and aggravated by acute malnutrition. The Ministry of Health had indicated in a statement that 592 cases had been identified since October 2020.
Once again, WHO recommends “emergency” action in order to “accelerate laboratory investigations, improve case management and isolation capacities, and strengthen monitoring and risk management”. Note that the removal and weakness of health infrastructure increases the risk of spread, “requiring an immediate high -level intervention to contain the epidemic”. The state of health care infrastructure in the country “makes the response in public health more complicated”, notes Michael Head in the face of this new epidemic.
The climbing of the armed conflict in the east of the country further aggravates the health situation. Also according to the African WHO office, the Goma and Bukavu sockets by the M23 have strengthened insecurity, with looting and attacks on humanitarian workers. The blocking of supply roads has also seriously disrupted humanitarian operations. A situation which coincides with the freezing of foreign aid of the Trump administration, for a period of 90 days, which helped to detect and control diseases through the vast country.