Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa — An unidentified disease that was initially identified in three children who consumed a bat has quickly killed over sixty individuals in northwest Congo, according to medical specialists.
What is particularly concerning, according to Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro Hospital, a regional monitoring center, is that in the majority of cases, the time between the beginning of symptoms, which include fever, vomiting, and internal bleeding, and death has been 48 hours.
Based on examinations of more than a dozen samples gathered thus far, experts have ruled out viruses including Ebola, dengue, Marburg, and yellow fever, which are frequently associated with similar hemorrhagic fever symptoms.
In areas where eating wild animals is common, there are widespread worries about diseases spreading from animals to people.
However, recent developments in the medical investigation revealed that a poisoning of a water source is likely to have caused the reported death
World Health Organization’s head of emergencies Mike Ryan said that authorities have ” a very strong level of suspicion,” that the poisoning was related to “a water source” in one of the affected villages.
Investigations are still ongoing, and WHO is not ruling out that there may be multiple agents that contributed to the death incidents.
As of February 19, 955 cases with at least 60 death have been reported over two villages in the northwest region of Central Africa, but any link between the two have not been established yet but authorities