GOATS AND SODA – They’re calling it Disease X.
It’s a mysterious illness circulating in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Current figures: almost 400 cases and 79 deaths. International health authorities are monitoring.
It all started on October 24 when the first patient fell ill with an unidentified sickness. Others soon followed, all in the Panzi health zone in Kwango Province. But it wasn’t until December 1 that the national government was notified.
“At the Emergency Operation Center for Public Health and at the INSP [National Institute of Public Health] — which is in maximum alert mode — we’ve already positioned central-level teams who will leave within 24 hours to join the [local] health zone,” says Dr. Dieudonné Mwamba, the director general of INSP, who spoke in French at a press briefing on Thursday.
“The most frequent symptoms that were noted: fever, headache, cough and sometimes difficulties to breathe,” he said. More than half the cases are in children under 5.
Prognosis: Uncertain
No one knows yet how worried to be about Disease X. In fact, “situations like this occur probably several times a year around the world,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who has been tracking the DRC outbreak.
Most times, an unidentified disease is in fact identified as something that’s known and brought under control locally.
However, in all such instances the concern is that the disease will take off and spread around the world, as COVID-19 did. In the DRC, he says, the mortality rate is striking but “it hasn’t appeared to grow exponentially.”
As Congolese officials as well as international teams from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization descend on the rural area to investigate, samples from the patients have already been sent to a lab …
