A mysterious disease has left dozens of people dead in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s health ministry has warned.
So far, at least 79 people have died in Kwango Province and the majority of them are aged between 15 and 18.
The disease has flu-like symptoms such as fever, headaches, runny noses and coughs, breathing difficulties and anaemia.
On The Pat Kenny Show, Trinity Professor of Experimental Immunology Kingston Mills said it is still too early to give “precise answers” as information is “still sketchy”.
“The most significant information came from the World Health Organisation on December 5th,” he said.
“They said there were 406 cases of this mysterious illness and 31 deaths; the locals have put the death rate higher - at around 140.
“The worrying thing is the death rate is very high - the WHO estimates it’s at 7% - and that’s very high for an infectious disease if you consider that with COVID-19 the death rate was 1%.”
Les échanges avec les infirmiers titulaires & la communauté de #Panzi🇨🇩 sont cruciaux pour la mission d’investigation de @OMSRDCONGO & @MinSanteDRC. Face aux défis sanitaires qui préoccupent la population locale, ces moments de dialogue sont essentiels pour des solutions durables pic.twitter.com/ak1gqf66gh
— OMS RDC (@OMSRDCONGO) December 10, 2024
One issue is that the health infrastructure in the DRC is poor and Kwango Province is poor.
It means it will likely be some time before doctors and scientists can say with certainty what the disease is.
“It’s not even certain that it’s an infectious disease,” Professor Mills said.
“Although yesterday, there was a report in the Guardian saying that they’d started the test and the first 12 samples, 10 of them were positive for malaria.
“Malaria is endemic in this region of Africa, so it is possible they already had malaria and then they got something else - a comorbidity.
“Malaria itself wouldn’t have respiratory symptoms which these patients have - so, it’s unlikely to be exclusively malaria. It’s more likely to be some other infectious disease.”
Après une nuit passée à Mawanda, les intervenants de @OMSRDCONGO & @MinSanteDRC poursuivent leur chemin vers Panzi🇨🇩, zone touchée par une #maladie_non_diagnostiquée. Malgré les défis posés par le terrain accidenté, ces agents recherchent aussi des cas suspects dans la communauté pic.twitter.com/3aQQe3xdYB
— OMS RDC (@OMSRDCONGO) December 10, 2024
Professor Mills said he thought it “unlikely” that malaria would be the exclusive cause and whatever it is would be “very rare”.
“The death rate wouldn’t fit with malaria anyway because the death rate for malaria is not that high,” he said.
“The other worrying factor is that a lot the people who have died are children who are under the age of five.
“So, again, that is unusual in that it’s not a COVID like disease because COVID doesn’t really affect children as much as it does older people.
“The possibilities are things like a variant of influenza - because the symptoms are very influenza-like - and that can be detected pretty readily.”
According to the CIA, the Democratic Republic of Congo has a population of around 115 million people.
The DRC gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and most its citizens are fluent in French.
Main image shows a healthcare worker examining a child in the DRC. Picture by: Alamy.com
