deaths in In the southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo, cases of an unidentified disease continue to rise. So far, 71 deaths have been confirmed, 27 in hospitals and 44 in communities in the southern province of Kwango. The World Health Organization (WHO) sent a team of experts to the area to collect samples and conduct laboratory tests to try to identify the causative agent.
Test results should be available later today or tomorrow, Jean Kaseya, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a press conference earlier today. “Initial diagnosis suggests a respiratory illness, but we need to wait for test results.” Seventeen of the hospitalized patients died from respiratory illness. Kasetani emphasized that there are still many unknowns about this disease, including whether and how it is transmitted. About 380 cases have been confirmed so far, with nearly half believed to involve children under the age of five.
Remy Psaki, Kwango’s deputy governor, and Democratic Republic of Congo’s health minister, Apollinaire Yumba, told Reuters that people infected with the mysterious disease suffer from symptoms of the flu, including coughing, vomiting, “high fever and severe headaches.” Symptoms such as these appear. Authorities are urging the public to take precautions and avoid contact with corpses to avoid possible infection. However, the number of infected people continues to rise and the alert level is also rising.
This region of the DRC is highly vulnerable from a health perspective, with 40 percent of the population suffering from malnutrition and a lack of medicines making access to healthcare difficult for many. The new outbreak coincides with the Democratic Republic of the Congo grappling with an outbreak of mpox, which the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern in August.
This story was originally WIREDItaly Translated from Italian.
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