Three people in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province have died from what is suspected to be haemorrhagic fever, according to medical sources.
Samples collected in Boende, 300km east of Bandaka, have been sent to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in the USA, to determine whether or not the disease is viral.
According to its spokesman, Eugene Kabambi, the UN’s World Health Organization has sent a team of experts to Boende together with government doctors.
“The third death, that of a child, was reported on Wednesday” 11 June, said Jacques Mokange, the province’s medical inspector.
“The first death was recorded on 29 May after the patient presented with fever, haemorrhage and finally bleeding from all the orifices in his body,” added Mokange, who declined to speculate about whether the deaths were caused by one of the Ebola group of viruses, the fatality rates of which range from 50 to 90 percent.
“Our investigations show no evidence of contamination among the four infected people and we are following those they were in contact with - family, friends and nurses - but we tentatively conclude that this could be a haemorrhagic fever but that it is not viral,” said the doctor.
 Various kinds of haemorrhagic fever frequently break out in DRC |
Other response measures include the provision of free care at a newly established health centre, and local radio broadcasts about the importance of hygiene.
Various kinds of haemorrhagic fever frequently break out in DRC. The most deadly case took place in 1995, when an Ebola outbreak killed over 250 people in Kikwit, Bandudu Province.
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