© Reuters/Finbarr O`ReillyCongolese travel by canoe on the Congo River in the northern province of Equateur, where a rash of Ebola-like deaths has prompted Health Minister Dr. Félix Kabange Numbi Mukwampa to investigate
A WHO report dated Thursday and seen by Reuters said that 592 people had contracted the disease, of whom 70 died. Five health care workers, including one doctor, are among the dead.
"This is not Ebola," a WHO spokesman said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.
A local priest who asked not to be named said that the illness had affected several villages and estimated that the death toll was over 100 people.
Kinshasa sent its health minister, Felix Kabange Numbi, and a team of experts on Wednesday to the region after reports of several deaths.
The outbreak began in the remote jungle province of Equateur where the first case of Ebola was reported in 1976, prompting speculation that it was the same illness that has killed more than 1,350 people in an outbreak now raging in West Africa.
Symptoms of the two diseases are similar; they include vomiting, diarrhoea and internal bleeding. But the fatality rate for this outbreak of haemorrhagic gastroenteritis is much lower than the West Africa Ebola outbreak, at around 12 percent versus close to 60 percent.
The WHO, which sent representatives to the area on Wednesday together with the Congolese team of experts, said four samples would be flown from the town of Boende on Friday to the capital Kinshasa for further testing.
Medical charity MSF said it had also sent a team to Equateur province to assess the situation. MSF said it was too early to confirm what the disease was.
Source: Reuters
Comment: Notice these two facts
1. the symptoms are very much like those of Ebola
2. the fatality rate is lower in the remote jungle province where this illness is currently taking people's lives
We can't know for sure, but the above causes us to wonder whether it is indeed the Ebola virus and whether the conditions of living of the Congolese in the remote jungles is what causes the lower rates of fatality. If this is the case, the WHO should be paying strict attention.
Consider also these items from the not so distant past:
Dec 2008: Two more dead from Ebola outbreak in DR Congo
Sept 2007: Congo Ebola death toll hits 172