The World Health Organization has suggested that mass poisoning was the cause of the 60 deaths. However, African experts suspect a more mundane cause.
The mystery of an unknown illness that has killed dozens of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo just 48 hours after symptoms first appeared has deepened after the World Health Organization put forward a new theory on Friday that appears to contradict the findings of African medical experts.
At least 60 people have died in Congo's Equateur province and more than 1,000 have fallen ill with the disease, which is characterized by “fever, headache, chills, sweating, stiff neck, muscle aches, joint and body pain, runny or bleeding nose, cough, vomiting and diarrhea,” according to the latest WHO report released on Thursday.
At a news conference in London on Friday, Dr Michael Ryan, WHO's emergencies director, said the illnesses were likely caused by poisoning, contradicting a theory put forward Thursday by experts at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention that malaria was to blame.
“Based on the symptoms of the death,” Dr Ryan said, “it looks and feels much more like a toxic type event, either biologically, like meningitis, or from a chemical exposure.” He added that there was a “very high level of suspicion” that the poisoning was related to the “water source.”
Investigators have determined that the initial outbreak began in the northwestern village of Boloko and then spread to the neighboring village of Danda, the WHO said. A second, larger outbreak occurred in the village of Bomate.
Preliminary investigations have identified the outbreak among three children who ate a bat in January and died. All of the children had nosebleeds and were vomiting blood before they died.
