[ad_1]
A plague epidemic that erupted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) three months ago has left 31 people dead, according to health officials.
Hundreds of cases have been identified in Ituri province, in the northeast of the country.
Patrick Karamura, the region’s health minister, told AFP on Friday: “We have more than 520 cases … of which more than 31 have been fatal.”
The cases are the bubonic form of the disease, with the exception of five cases of pneumonic plague and two of septicaemic plague, he said.
Anne Laudisoit, epidemiologist with the New York-based NGO EcoHealth Alliance, said the cases surfaced in the province between November 15 and December 13.
The average age of the patients was 13, but it ranged from three months to 73, she said.
EchoHealth Alliance warned last month that teens under the age of 17 appear to be the group most at risk, accounting for 78.9% of all sick people.
The plague has persisted in Ituri province since it was first confirmed there in 1926.
It is an infectious disease caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis and is found in animals around the world, including rats, ground squirrels, and prairie dogs. Fleas are generally used as a vector for plague.
People can also be infected through direct contact with an infected animal, by inhalation, and in the case of pneumonic plague, person to person.
Yersinia pestis is treatable with antibiotics if started early enough.
Ms Laudisoit, who works alongside a team of researchers in Ituri, said an early sign of the latest outbreak came with massive rat deaths.
The outbreak comes amid a worrying outbreak of Ebola in the DRC.
Two people died from the disease in the eastern province of North Kivu within a week.
The DRC’s health ministry has deployed a team to Biena and Katwa health zones to trace more than 100 contacts of two women who succumbed to the deadly disease.
Ebola swept through eastern Congo from 2018 to 2020 in an epidemic that killed more than 2,200 people before being declared last June.
At least three people have also died from Ebola in south-eastern Guinea, in the first re-emergence of the disease in the country since the deadly outbreak of 2013-2016
Five other patients have tested positive for the disease and are in isolation at treatment centers, officials said.
The last major Ebola outbreak in West Africa began in Guinea in 2013, with a death toll of more than 11,000 after the disease spread across the continent. The vast majority of cases have occurred in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
[ad_2]
Source link