Mystery disease death toll rises to 60 as Brits urged to look out for symptoms and WHO scrambles to find cause
AT LEAST seven more people have died and 500 left sick from a mystery illness ravaging villages in north-western Congo, new figures reveal.
Brits are being urged to look out for symptoms of the disease, which has killed victims within 48 hours, as an expert warns it could reach the UK.
Health officials are still scrambling to identify the cause and whether the cases in the two villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur province, separated by more than 120 miles, are related.
So far, the World Health Organization (WHO) believes the outbreak began on January 21 in Boloko, a village in the Bolomba region, after children ate a bat and died within two days.
They died following hemorrhagic fever symptoms, a group of illnesses characterised by fever, nose bleeding, headache, joint pain, and other symptoms.
Since then, there have been 1,096 cases and 60 deaths in Bolomba, as well as the distant village of Basankusu, combined, according to the latest surveillance report from the WHO published today.
This is up from the 419 cases and the 53 deaths they recorded on Monday, when the UN body said the disease was a “significant public health threat”.
It has a fatality rate of 12.3 per cent, the WHO’s African arm said, which is around 10 times higher than when Covid first began spreading.
Doctors on the ground have sent samples to the National Institute for Biomedical Research in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa.
All have come back negative for Ebola or other common haemorrhagic fever diseases like Marburg.
However, around half of those tested had proven positive for malaria.
Experts are now ramping up disease surveillance even further, speaking with locals to gather information, and offering treatment for illnesses like malaria, typhoid fever, and meningitis.
Dr Zania Stamataki, a virologist from the University of Birmingham, warned, has warned that cases could begin to crop up elsewhere.
She said: “Infections know no borders and do not respect country lines.
“People travel and infections travel with them, either hitching a ride in a person or in animal carriers, so one cannot exclude spread outside of a country’s borders.”
“In the UK and in other countries we need to remain vigilant and watch for symptoms”.
“Symptoms of a haemorrhagic fever-type disease should be reported to the UK Health Security Agency via a registered medical practitioner.”
A similar mystery outbreak in the DCR late last year eventually turned out to be severe malaria.
That outbreak left around 500 people ill and killed at least 149 as it spread in Panzi, Kwango, a remote part of the DRC.
What are the symptoms?
Congo's Ministry of Health said about 80 per cent of the patients share similar symptoms including fever, chills, body aches and diarrhoea.
While these symptoms can be caused by many common infections, health officials initially feared the symptoms and the quick deaths of some of the victims could also be a sign of a hemorrhagic fever such as Ebola, which was also linked to an infected animal.
However, Ebola and similar diseases including Marburg have been ruled out after more than a dozen samples were collected and tested in the capital of Kinshasa.
The WHO said it is investigating a number of possible causes, including malaria, viral hemorrhagic fever, food or water poisoning, typhoid fever and meningitis.
Bats are a well-known reservoir for viruses that can potentially jump into humans and cause outbreaks of disease.
The flying mammals have been found to harbour the rabies virus, coronaviruses such as the one which caused Covid-19, Marburg, Nipah, Hendra and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers).
Fruit bats are also a common reservoir for the deadly Ebola virus.
There have long been concerns about viruses jumping from wild animals such as bats to humans in areas where they have close contact, or where people kill and eat them.
The number of such outbreaks in Africa has surged by more than 60 per cent in the last decade, the WHO said in 2022.