LUKUTU, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Bamongo Godefroid lay in a hospital bed sick with malaria with … [+]
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A mystery illness found in a remote part of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been officially identified as a severe form of malaria. The disease has sickened nearly 600 people, mostly children, and killed 143.
Reuters reports that on Tuesday the DRC’s health ministry said that a previously unidentified disease—sometimes labeled “Disease X” in the media—found in the country’s Panzi health zone in the southwestern Kwango province, is a serious form of malaria. “The mystery has finally been solved. It’s a case of severe malaria in the form of a respiratory illness,” the health ministry stated.
This echoes the preliminary results from testing released last week in which out of 12 initial samples collected of people with the then mystery disease, ten tested positive for malaria. Local authorities said the outbreak had already killed 143 people with 592 cases reported thus far. The upsurge in cases began in October and has mainly affected children under 14, with roughly 64% of all reported cases in infants and toddlers under five.
Malaria is endemic in the DRC. The parasite Plasmodium is transmitted to humans primarily through the bites of infected mosquitoes. People who have malaria usually feel very sick with a high fever and shaking chills. The main symptoms reported in this particular outbreak are similar to those of influenza, with patients suffering from headaches, coughing and shortness of breath. “Difficulty breathing” is included as a common respiratory symptom in severe cases of malaria, according to the World Health Organization. Doctors are also seeing patients with acute anemia, which can accompany malarial disease.
Based on the set of observed symptoms, the WHO said earlier this month—before today’s officially declared diagnosis—that it was looking at a possible link with diseases such as COVID, influenza, measles and malaria.
The concern globally had been that the hitherto unknown illness was perhaps a novel or mutated respiratory viral disease of some sort. But identifying malaria as the culprit should allay fears of a wider epidemic. Malaria’s mode of transmission, through mosquito bites, limits its ability to spread rapidly and widely compared to airborne viruses.
Malaria is not generally known to have a particularly high case fatality rate. Even in grave instances, it’s usually less than 2%. Perhaps contributing to the higher death rate in the current situation in the DRC is the fact that many of the people infected are “weakened by malnutrition.” The Panzi health zone in Kwango Province is a remote area of the country, which suffers from high levels of malnutrition. Approximately 40% of the population is malnourished. There is also low vaccination coverage in the region, leaving children vulnerable to a range of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles.
During his media briefing last week, the WHO’s Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus discussed the then unidentified illness affecting parts of the DRC. He noted the country’s lack of adequate medical resources and the fact that it’s already in the grip of a particularly virulent variant (clade I) of the mpox disease, with 21,000 suspected cases and more than 700 deaths.
The WHO has sent rapid response teams to assist the local health authorities in treating patients, collecting blood samples for laboratory testing, providing a more detailed clinical characterization of the detected cases and further investigating the transmission dynamics.
