Serge Ngalebato, chief medical officer at Bikoro Hospital and the regional monitoring centre in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said the situation was “really alarming”.
Doctors are on alert over a 'truly alarming' unidentified illness that claims lives in just hours.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported more than 50 deaths in northwest Democratic Republic of Congo from an unknown illness with rapidly emerging symptoms. WHO experts on the ground in the African country have treated hundreds of patients and found a short two-day window between the onset of symptoms and death.
Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro Hospital, the regional monitoring centre, said in a statement after the alarming discovery that the relatively short time interval between symptoms and death was “really worrying”. The WHO has warned that the outbreak could be due to another virus jumping from humans to animals.
An unexplained virus that causes bleeding and has a 50% fatality rate has broken loose, prompting official warning
The WHO said the outbreak began just over a month ago, on January 21, and that 419 cases had been reported since then through mid-February. Of the more than 400 people who contracted the disease, 53 have died, representing a fatality rate of about 12.49 percent — significantly higher than diseases like Covid, which has a fatality rate of 3.14 percent.
The first outbreak in the town of Boloko began after three children ate a bat and died within 48 hours of developing symptoms of haemorrhagic fever, according to the WHO Africa office. There have been long-standing concerns about diseases transmitted from animals to humans in areas where wild animals are often eaten.
The number of such outbreaks in Africa has increased by more than 60 percent in the past decade, according to the WHO. After a second outbreak of the current mystery disease began in the city of Bomate on February 9, samples from 13 cases were sent to the National Institute for Biomedical Research in the capital, Kinshasa, for testing, the WHO said.
All the samples tested negative for Ebola or other common hemorrhagic fevers, such as Marburg. Some samples tested positive for malaria. Last year, another mysterious flu-like illness killed dozens of people in another part of the country and was determined to be probable malaria.
Sourse: www.mirror.co.uk
