Public health officials in Africa urged caution on Thursday as Congo's health minister said the government was on alert over a flu-like illness that has killed dozens of people in recent weeks.
Jean Kaseya, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters that more details about the disease should become known in the next 48 hours, as experts receive the results of laboratory samples from infected people. .
“Initial diagnoses lead us to believe it is a respiratory illness,” Kaseya said. “But we have to wait for the lab results.”
“There is so much we don't know” about the disease, including whether it is contagious and how it is transmitted, Kaseya added.
Congolese authorities have so far confirmed 71 deaths, including 27 people who died in hospitals and 44 in the community in the southern province of Kwango, Health Minister Roger Kamba said.
“The Congolese government is on general alert in the face of this disease,” Kamba said, without providing further details.
Among the hospitalized victims, 10 died due to lack of blood transfusion and 17 due to respiratory problems, he said.
The epidemiological investigation begins
The deaths were recorded between November 10 and 25 in the Panzi health zone, Kwango province. There were around 380 cases, almost half of which involved children under the age of five, according to the minister.
The Africa CDC recorded slightly different figures, with 376 cases and 79 deaths. This gap is due to problems with surveillance and case definition, Kaseya explained.
Authorities said symptoms include fever, headache, cough and anemia. Epidemiology experts are present in the region to take samples and investigate the disease, the minister said.
The Panzi health zone, located approximately 700 kilometers from the capital Kinshasa, is a remote area of the Kwango province, which makes it difficult to access.
The epidemiological experts took two days to arrive on site, the minister said. Due to a lack of testing capacity, samples had to be transported to Kikwit, more than 500 kilometers away, said Dieudonné Mwamba, director of the National Institute of Public Health.
“The health system is quite weak in our rural areas, but for certain types of care, the ministry has all the provisions, and we are waiting for the first results of the analysis of the samples to properly calibrate things,” Kaseya said.
Mwamba said Panzi was already a “fragile” area, with 40 percent of its residents suffering from malnutrition. The country was also hit by an outbreak of typhoid fever two years ago, and there is currently a resurgence of seasonal flu across the country.
“We have to take all of this into account as context,” Mwamba said.
“A care problem,” says a resident
Panzi resident Claude Niongo said his wife and seven-year-old daughter died from the disease.
“We don't know the cause, but I only noticed high fever, vomiting … and then death,” Niongo told The Associated Press by telephone. “Now the authorities are telling us about an epidemic but in the meantime, there is a problem with healthcare [and] people are dying,” he added.
Lucien Lufutu, president of the civil society consultation framework of Kwango province, which is located in Panzi, said the local hospital where patients are treated is under-equipped.
“There is a lack of medicines and medical equipment, since the disease is not yet known, most of the population is treated by traditional practitioners,” Lufutu told the AP.
He also said the disease was affecting Katenda, another nearby health zone.
Asked about a possible outbreak in other health zones, the minister replied that he could not say if this was the case but that nothing had been reported.
Congo is already in the grip of the mpox epidemic, with more than 47,000 suspected cases and more than 1,000 suspected deaths from the disease in the central African country, according to the World Health Organization.
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