While local health officials said severe malaria is the culprit, the WHO said testing is still ongoing to confirm the cause of the outbreak.
ADVERTISEMENTA mystery disease that has killed dozens of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in recent weeks has been identified as severe malaria, local health officials have reportedly said.
Officials in the Central African country reported earlier this month that hundreds of people – mostly children under five years old – had gotten sick with an unknown flu-like illness in the southwestern Kwango province, prompting health workers to flock to the remote region to collect samples and help care for patients.
“The mystery has finally been solved,” the health ministry said in a statement obtained by Reuters. “It’s a case of severe malaria in the form of a respiratory illness”.
The DRC’s health ministry said there have been 592 cases since October, with a fatality rate of 6.2 per cent, which is much lower than the previously reported death toll.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it has not confirmed the determination, but that malnutrition-exacerbated malaria was among the conditions being considered as a potential cause of illness, along with acute pneumonia, influenza, COVID-19, and measles.
Noted symptoms of the mystery condition have included fever, headache, cough, runny nose, fatigue, and body aches, and all patients with severe illness were severely malnourished.
Malaria is common in the DRC, with more than 30.5 million cases and nearly 79,000 deaths in 2021.
A WHO spokesperson told Euronews Health that the organisation is still waiting on the results of samples that were sent to the national laboratory in Kinshasa, which is about 700 km away from the outbreak region, for testing.
“Lab testing is ongoing,” the spokesperson said. “Some samples arrived this weekend in Kinshasa and others are on their way”.
Identification has been slow because it takes two days to reach Kwango province by road, and the rainy season has slowed health workers’ routes there.