A mystery disease has killed more than 50 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) just hours after symptoms began.
The World Health Organization and doctors in the DRC said that the time between symptom onset and death was just 48 hours in most cases. The WHO describes the outbreak as posing ‘a significant public health threat’.
Officials believe the outbreak began on January 21, and 419 cases have been recorded as of Monday, including 53 deaths.
One area has an ‘exceptionally high fatality rate’ with-two thirds of people who contracted the mystery disease recorded to have died.
According to the WHO’s Africa office, the first outbreak started in the town of Boloko after three children reportedly ate a dead bat.
They died 48 hours after developing symptoms of hemorrhagic fever, a group of illnesses characterized by fever, bleeding, headache, joint pain, and other symptoms.
‘That’s what’s really worrying,’ Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro Hospital in the DRC, told the Associated Press, referring to how rapidly the victims perished.
WHO said two health zones had recorded outbreaks – the Bolomba and Basankusu areas.
An outbreak in the Congo is causing alarm. Pictured are Congolese officials and the World Health Organization officials during a training against the Ebola virus in 2018
In the Basankusu health zone, there had been 419 cases recorded – with 45 tragic deaths.
Whereas in Bolomba health zone there had been 12 cases, and a massive eight deaths – massive two thirds of all its cases.
Ebola is one of the most infamous causes of hemorrhagic fever.
The news comes after doctors warned President Donald Trump‘s purge of the CDC and ban on communications with the WHO raised the risk of future epidemics abroad and at home.
WHO officials also warned that the number of outbreaks from diseases jumping from animals to humans – such as by eating them – has surged more than 60 percent in Africa in the last decade.
Officials did not speculate what the mystery illness may be.
However, after the second outbreak of the mystery disease began in the town of Bomate on February 9, officials sent samples from 13 cases for testing.
All samples have been negative for Ebola and other hemorrhagic diseases like Marburg, though some samples were positive for malaria.
The illness has a fatality rate of 12.3 percent, according to the WHO’s Africa office, which is around 10 times higher than when Covid first began spreading.
Health officials say the remote location of the outbreaks, combined with the country’s ‘weak health care infrastructure increase the risk of further spread, requiring immediate high-level intervention to contain the outbreak’.
The outbreaks come just months after mystery ‘Disease X’ ravaged the DRC and killed 143 people last year. Officials later found it was likely a severe respiratory form of malaria.
The CDC told DailyMail.com at the time that international risk of the disease was ‘low.’
Malaria is extremely prevalent in the DRC, affecting 30million residents and killing nearly 25,000 in 2022, according to charity Severe Malaria Observatory.
That year, the DRC recorded the second-most malaria cases in the world behind Nigeria.
The nation has also grappled with an outbreak of Mpox. The WHO estimates there have been more than 47,000 suspected cases and over 1,000 suspected deaths so far.
Former White House doctor Stephanie Psaki warned weeks ago that Trump was raising the risk of outbreaks abroad and at home
It comes after a former White House doctor warned that Trump’s executive orders to cut the CDC off from the WHO could allow one of the world’s deadliest diseases to enter the US.
Dr Stephanie Psaki — who is also the sister of Joe Biden’s former press secretary Jen Psaki — said she feared it could lay the ground for dangerous pathogens to come to America viruses like Marburg and Ebola.
There is no vaccine or treatment for Marburg, which causes bleeding from orifices like the eyes, ears and mouth, and the only hope of protecting Americans ‘is to stop it at its source,’ said Dr Pskai.
Last month, Trump issued an executive order to begin the process of withdrawing the US from WHO, but that did not take immediate effect.
Leaving WHO requires the approval of Congress and that the US meets its financial obligations for the current fiscal year.
Marburg has a mortality rate of up to 88 percent. There are currently no vaccines or treatments approved to treat the virus
The US also must provide a one-year notice.
His administration also told federal health agencies to stop most communications with the public through at least the end of the month.
Meanwhile, earlier this month Robert Kennedy Jr. slashed 1,300 jobs at the CDC in his new role as health chief.
The newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services fired nearly half of the vaunted team of ‘disease detectives’ during his first day on the job, setting the scene for a slimmed down department moving forward.
The entire incoming class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) was also reportedly told they are no longer needed.