A Mysterious Crying Disease Has Killed Over 50 People And Infected More Than 400 Others
A mysterious and deadly illness known as “crying disease” has been sweeping through parts of Congo. So far, it has killed over 50 people and infected more than 400 others.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the disease can kill people within just 48 hours of its onset, raising the alarm among authorities.
The first outbreak was reported on January 21 of this year. In the town of Bokolo in Congo’s Equateur province, three children under the age of five ate a dead bat and soon fell ill. They had hemorrhagic fever symptoms and died within two days.
On February 9, a second bad outbreak was reported in Bomate. After that, samples from 13 cases were sent to the National Institute for Biomedical Research for testing in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo.
The two villages are more than 120 miles apart. It is unclear how the disease spread or whether it spread between people.
Per Congo’s Ministry of Health, nearly 80 percent of patients shared similar symptoms, including fever, chills, diarrhea, and body aches. Among children, persistent crying seemed to be a dominant symptom.
Other symptoms were neck/joint pain, shortness of breath, sweating, vomiting, and internal bleeding. Individuals aged 60 and below experienced intense thirst.
In the most recent outbreaks, several victims in remote locations died before they could receive medical treatment.
The possibilities of Ebola and Marburg virus have been ruled out. Despite extensive testing, the exact cause remains unknown.
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The illness could be due to malaria, hemorrhagic fever, typhoid fever, food/water poisoning, or meningitis, according to the WHO.
“Urgent action is needed to accelerate laboratory investigations, improve case management and isolation capacities, and strengthen surveillance and risk communication. The remote location and weak health care infrastructure increase the risk of further spread, requiring immediate high-level intervention to contain the outbreak,” said the organization.
Testing showed that nearly half of the patients had malaria. Many people infected with the disease were also suffering from malnutrition.
“Outbreaks like this will happen many times around the world and are typically brought under control relatively quickly,” said Dr. Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
“However, here, it is concerning that we have hundreds of cases and over 50 deaths, with hemorrhagic fever-like symptoms widely reported among those cases.”
The situation could be a crisis because it poses a significant public health threat to Africa and has the potential to reach other parts of the world.
WHO suspects that a poisoned water source is the culprit, but the investigation is still ongoing. Infected individuals may be dying from sepsis, which occurs when an infection creates an inflammatory response in the blood. Children under the age of five make up 18 percent of cases and 15.5 percent of deaths.
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