The hypothesis of a new zoonosis at the base of the lethal disease in the northwest of the Congo is removed. It is easier for it to be intoxication.
The unknown disease that triggered a new health emergency in Congo would seem to be linked to «some kind of intoxication event», According to what was declared on Friday 28 February by the WHO in an online press conference. It is not yet possible to affirm it with certainty but, in one of the most affected villages, The cases would seem linked to the sharing of a single source of contaminated water.
The alarm and symptoms. Since the beginning of the year in the villages of Basankusu and Bolomba, in two different health districts of the province of Équateur, in the north -western part of the Congo, they had been identified in total 1,096 cases of an unidentified disease with symptoms such as fever, headache, chills, sweating, stiffness of the neck, muscle pain, multiple joint pain and muscle pain, nose that colas or bleeds, cough, vomiting and diarrhea. The pathology is highly lethal: in all there were 60 deaths, which took place within 48 hours of the appearance of the symptoms (to learn more).
The spectrum of a zoonosis. The first investigations had made it possible to exclude Marburg’s Ebola and viruses, two pathogens that cause serious hemorrhagic fevers, from the list of possible suspects. To anguish the local health authorities was the fact that among the first cases there were those of three children who they had been seen consuming the carcass of a batanimal tank of many viruses that can infect man.
However, further research has made it possible to ascertain that The episode was a coincidence, and not the cause of the disease. Moreover, pathogens such as the Ebola virus, which emerged for the first time in the current Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1976, take more days to be lethal compared to the “flash” course of the mysterious disease.
The least worrying hypothesis. In the update of Friday 28 February Michael Ryan, head of the emergencies of the World Health Organization, spoke of a “very strong level of suspicion of an event of poisoning due to the contamination of a water source” in one of the villages, without specifying which of the two. Ryan did not clarify whether the alleged contamination took place by deliberate action or for negligence (or an accident). But if this were the cause, then It should not be difficult to contain the spread of the disease.
The roads open. Waiting for further confirmations, it is not clear to investigate other slopes. Half of the samples analyzed were positive for malaria, common in these areas, but the health personnel are also trying to exclude “a toxic event both from a biological perspective, such as meningitis and from a chemical exposure”, said Ryan.
