<
https://theconversation.com/mystery-disease-kills-dozens-in-congo-what-we-know-so-far-245324>
"A “mystery disease” recently struck the south-western corner of the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), killing between 67 and 143 people over two weeks. The
disease was reported to cause flu-like symptoms of fever, headache, cough and
anaemia.
An epidemiologist told
Reuters that it was mainly women and children who were
seriously affected by the disease. But little else is known about the disease
so far.
Health officials in the DRC are urgently investigating this incident to
identify the cause of this deadly outbreak. Initially, they would consider
possible diseases known to be endemic to the region such as malaria, dengue or
Chikungunya.
However, they are likely to face difficulties detecting the cause because of
diagnostic testing infrastructure issues, as well as difficulties with sample
collections, transport of those samples to laboratory and testing.
In low-income countries, such as the DRC, many clinical laboratories can only
test for common pathogens. Limitations in the quality and performance of some
of their clinical laboratories are also a problem.
If it is not one of the usual suspects, the detection of rarer pathogens often
requires samples to be sent to more specialist laboratories that can do
specialised tests, such as gene sequencing.
This could mean that samples need to be sent to laboratories abroad. However,
the international sharing of such biological samples is highly contentious over
concerns that the benefits of doing so are often not fairly shared between
countries.
Another priority for local health officials is to understand the extent and
severity of the outbreak. The high mortality and number of cases of people
affected are alarming. However, it is not easy to work out the true extent of
such outbreaks, as not all infected patients will be detected.
Not all infected people seek care. Clinics may be few and far between,
especially in remote areas, and are often understaffed. Indeed, the DRC has
fewer than two doctors per 10,000 population (by comparison the UK which has
more than 31 doctors per 10,000 population).
Even if patients did attend a hospital or clinic, not all infections would be
diagnosed. Not all patients would be tested for infection, and not all detected
infections are reported to the health authorities.
The lack of information about the cause, extent and number of infected people
makes it hard to accurately assess the threat it poses. But this is not an
isolated risk. Outbreaks of new infectious diseases have occurred regularly
over the years.
This is partly driven by climate change, changing population demography,
urbanisation and deforestation that enables the “spillover” of infections from
animals to humans.
Unfortunately, our global infectious disease radar is broken. Disease
surveillance is fragmented globally.
In poorer countries, there will be many areas where diseases are not detected
or are detected late. Surveillance services are often poorly resourced and
understaffed, staff often lack training or supervision, and reporting may not
be standardised.
There is also often a significant delay from the time a person gets infected,
and is diagnosed with the disease, to the time it is reported to the public
health authorities. This in turn delays disease control responses to outbreaks.
These problems are worse in resource-poor settings, such as in sub-Saharan
Africa."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
