Remains a mystery

“Disease X”: samples are of too poor quality

"We hope that the team will bring back some of the samples early next week," said the health authorities (symbolic image).

(Bild: APA/Roland Schlager)

Whether a "Disease X" is really circulating in the southwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo or whether numerous people there are ill due to known pathogens such as malaria remains unclear for the time being. The African health authority CDC Africa explained that the samples from the affected area in Panzi were in poor condition. Therefore, no further information is available yet. Additional samples are now to be obtained.

CDC Director General Jean Kaseya said that he was in contact with Placide Mbala, the head of the Institute of Epidemiology in Congo's capital Kinshasa. According to Mbala, no swabs from the noses and throats of potentially infected people had been taken locally.

In a message, Mbala explained: "We are still doing some preliminary analysis, but we will wait for new samples to determine what is going on and to possibly identify the pathogen."

Three days to reach area
A multidisciplinary team from the Congolese health authorities, the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) is on the way to obtain new samples, according to Kaseya. "But we're talking about 700 kilometers - it takes three days to get from Kinshasa to Panzi," he said, pointing out the poor connections to the remote area in Kwango province near the border with Angola. "We are currently not making any official statements about this disease."

Dieudonné Mwamba, Director of the Institute of National Health in Kinshasa, confirmed that several of the samples examined had tested positive for malaria. However, whether the patients were suffering exclusively from malaria or also from a previously unknown disease could only be determined after further investigations.

"Disease X" unlikely
The aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières, whose staff are providing support on the ground, does not believe that it is a pathogen that is not yet known. It is almost always the case that a perceived accumulation of deaths is then due to known or the best-known pathogens, said Marcus Bachmann from Doctors Without Borders Austria on Thursday in response to an APA inquiry. "It is very unlikely that this is a case of 'disease X' or 'Y' or 'Z'."

According to the results so far, most cases are likely to be due to malaria. Many of those affected are children under the age of five who are acutely malnourished - many are severely or moderately malnourished. "This combination is a life-threatening mix," reported Bachmann. This very often results in a complicated form of malaria.

More than 500 suspected cases
Since the end of October, 527 cases of the disease have been recorded. These include 225 children up to the age of five, as Kaseya said. The World Health Organization (WHO) spoke of 31 deaths, the local authorities of more than 130 deaths.