‘Mystery’ Illness Claims Lives: 147 Cases, 32 Deaths in Just One Week

United States: There has been a weekly case incidence report of a total of 147 confirmed cases in an unrecorded area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo DRC, according to data from the Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention or Africa CDC today.

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During the weekly briefing given on Tuesday by Africa CDC Director Jean Kaseya, MD, MPH, the figures attained were 111 for the previous week and beyond.

According to him, “This means we have a major public health issue in the DRC,” cidrap.umn.edu reported.

About 42 percent of the victims are children aged below 5 years, as experts noted.

There was one additional fatality in the previous week that included a child below the age of five.

More deaths reported

There are almost 32 deaths and healthcare-associated deaths have occurred, and investigations to establish the source of 44 reported community deaths are ongoing.

While malaria was identified in some of the first specimens, the process of finding the cause or causes of the outbreak is far from over, as testing hits some hefty challenges when it comes to getting samples to the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB) in Kinshasa.

An official from the lab said they reported to Africa CDC that samples received on December 7 were of poor quality, such as blood and serum samples that were poorly preserved, and some showed hemolysis. The lab didn’t get any nasopharyngeal samples, as experts stated.

Kaseya stated that a team was dispatched again to sample the other areas of the Panzi health zone, and it was 3 days due to the inaccessible area and poor road network, cidrap.umn.edu reported.

According to Dieudonne Mwamba, the MD and PhD of the National Institute of Public Health under the health ministry of the DRC, the team was able to get 78 more samples of several types.

They are on their way to the lab in Kinshasa. He said that officers expect more clear-cut outcomes sometime in a week.