Posted on 08/31/2007 3:01:37 PM PDT by blam
Mystery DR Congo fever kills 60
More than 60 people have died because of a fever epidemic in the centre of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, health officials say.
Many of the victims are people who have been in contact with the deceased, including medical staff, and who lack equipment to deal with the illness.
The latest victim was a nurse at a local hospital. She died on Thursday after taking care of infected patients.
Health officials say the medical staff had no masks and this put them at risk.
Speaking from Kananga, the capital of the West Kasai region, Dr Jean-Constantin Kanow said the illness had first started three months ago, when chickens and pigs started dying in villages.
But now people were also affected, Dr Kanow said.
Funeral rites
Traditionally, people in DR Congo wash dead bodies by hand.
The doctor said that such funeral rites seemed to favour the transmission of the disease.
He said many people who attended the recent funeral of a local chief had also died of fever and dehydration.
The World Health Organisation has sent a team to take blood samples for analysis at laboratories specialising in haemorrhagic fever.
DR Congo's last major Ebola outbreak killed more than 200 people in 1995 in Kikwit, about 400km (249 miles) west of the current outbreak.
But health officials say it is too early to determine if this new epidemic outbreak is indeed a haemorrhagic fever.
Hopefully they can contain it.
Ebola, hemorragic fevers, AIDS, mystery DR Congo fever - the Congo sounds like a really harsh environment for the human species.
The deadliest strain of Ebola is Ebola Zaire, which popped up in the central Congo a couple of decades ago. Messy stuff, and I believe one with a 90 percent mortality rate.
The only good thing about Ebola is that it kills people so fast that it can’t spread easily. Aside from that, it’s a creation of the devil himself.
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