A mysterious illness With Ebola-like symptoms, the Democratic Republic of Congo emerged. According to the World Health Organization, the disease was first detected on January 21, and for the past five weeks, hundreds of have been infected and more than 50 people have died in the northwest of the country. Health officials have yet to determine the cause of the disease.

Initial investigations indicate that the outbreak in the town of Boloko began, where three children died within days of eating the carcass of a bat. The symptoms of the infected are fever, headaches, diarrhea, nasal bleeding, vomiting blood and general bleeding – corresponding to the symptoms caused by viruses such as Ebola and Marburg. Experts, however, excluded these pathogens after testing more than a dozen samples from suspected cases.

In early February, health authorities recorded a second group of business and deaths in the town of Bomata, a few hundred kilometers away, although there is currently no link between the groups. On February 15, when the WHO last reported on the outbreak, a total of 431 suspected infections were reported, including 53 deaths. In most cases, the interval between the onset of symptoms and death was only 48 hours.

Monsters from 18 cases were sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Research in the Capital of the DRC, Kinshasa, which tested negatively for the most common pathogens linked to hemorrhagic fever symptoms, although some were tested positive for malaria. “The exact cause remains unknown, with Ebola and Marburg already excluded, which has expressed concern about a serious infectious or toxic agent,” the WHO wrote in its most recent bulletin about the outbreak, the urgent need to accelerate laboratory investigations, increase the management and isolation of the contaminated, and increase the oversight and risk communication. “The remote location and poor healthcare infrastructure increase the risk of further distribution, which requires immediate high-level intervention to contain the outbreak.”

Illness outbreaks caused by pathogens in animals transmitted to humans – a process known as a zoonotic transition – becomes more common in Africa. Changing soil use and climate change are two most important drivers as they can both increase contact between people and pathogen-harsh wildlife. According to estimates of the WHO, the outbreaks of diseases transferred from animals to humans increased by 63 percent between 2012 and 2022.

Late last year, another mysterious illness killed more than 70 people in southwest the DRC, many of their children. Symptoms in that outbreak were flu -like, and most patient samples tested returned positively for malaria. The outbreak was later attributed to respiratory infections exacerbated by malaria.

This story originally appears on Wire Italia and was translated from Italian.