A man with hemorrhagic fever symptoms in western Congo died on Thursday, leading to the suspicion that a virus, which has remained unidentified for more than three weeks now, might have played a role alongside malaria in a mysterious outbreak that claimed dozens of lives in the country, news agency AP reported.
Congo health authorities said last week they suspected malaria in the flu-like disease outbreak, which has killed at least 37 people and where more than four out of five patients have tested positive for malaria.
But this recent death of the man with hemorrhagic fever, which is not usually associated with malaria, could hint towards a possible virus at work.
On December 5, Jean Kaseya, head of Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had urged caution as the government was on alert over the mystery flu-like disease that killed dozens of people between November 10 and 25 in the Panzi health zone of Kwango province.
Kaseya at the time said that as per first diagnostics, officials think that it is a respiratory disease, adding that further laboratory results were awaited.
Whether the disease is infectious or how it is transmitted still remains unknown. Provincial health minister Apollinaire Yumba had in the first week of December said that symptoms of this mystery disease include fever, headache, cough and anaemia.
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The man that died Thursday also belonged to the remote Panzi area of the Kwango province where the outbreak has been recorded thus far, Ngashi Ngongo, an official with the Africa CDC, told reporters.
Ngongo said that the recent death has led to a possible theory that the outbreak is either “severe malaria on a background of malnutrition” or “a viral infection that is happening on the background of malaria”.
A parasite-caused disease, malaria is an endemic in the Panzi area high levels of malnutrition have also been recorded, leading to the complications in diagnosing this recent outbreak.
Ngongo said that so far there have been 592 reported cases and 37 deaths confirmed in health facilities, which is a jump from last week’s 65 cases and 5 deaths.
Additionally, there have also been 44 deaths documented in communities, which are currently under investigation.
The Africa CDC official noted that of the samples taken from 51 cases, 86 per cent tested positive for malaria. He said that tests to determine any additional diseases are also being conducted at national laboratories, the results for which are likely to be out next week.
Chief of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had said last week that while most blood samples in Panzi tested positive malaria, it was possible that more than one disease was involved in the matter.
According to WHO, most of the cases and deaths reported from Kwango’s Panzi have been of children under the age of 14.
WHO experts and Congo’s National Rapid Response Team visited the area last week to investigate the deaths and take samples.
Officials said it is difficult to reach to the Panzi health zone, which is around 700 kilometers away from the capital, Kinshasa. As per Congo’s health minister, it took two days for the experts to arrive in the region.
Dieudonne Mwama, head of the National Institute for Public Health, had said last week that owing to the local testing capacity, the collected samples had to be taken to Kitwit, located over 500 kilometres away from the Panzi area.
The area was hit by an epidemic of typhoid fever around two years ago, and is currently witnessing a resurgence of seasonal flu across the nation, Mwamba further said.
The WHO chief on Tuesday had said that Panzi also has a low vaccinate rate and coverage, leaving children in a vulnerable position to several diseases including malaria.
(with AP inputs)
