A mystery disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo is quickly spreading and has already killed dozens of patients. Officials discovered that the outbreak started when children ate a bat carcass.
Doctors from the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the illness has already resulted in 419 cases, 53 of which have become fatal, since the latest outbreak started on Jan. 21, 2025. What makes the disease even more terrifying is that death occurs within 48 hours from the first sign of symptoms.
Mysterious Congo Disease
The medical director of Bikoro Hospital, Serge Ngalebato, said that the short interval between the onset of symptoms and death was extremely worrying. These so-called "hemorrhagic fever" symptoms are typically linked to known deadly viruses.
Right now, researchers are still trying to understand more about the mysterious disease. On the other hand, WHO's Africa office has already traced back to the first outbreak in the town of Boloko, when three children ate a bat carcass and lost their lives in less than two days. It was reported that the kids died after bleeding from their noses and vomiting blood.
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The recent outbreak echoes the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which officials believed originated in bats and jumped to humans in China before spreading worldwide and resulting in the deaths of millions of people, according to Futurism.
The WHO said that the still unnamed disease poses a "significant public health threat" as it has a fatality rate of 12.3%. Samples were tested, and medical professionals were able to confirm that the illness was not related to other common hemorrhagic fever diseases, such as Ebola and Marburg.
Rapid Spread Across the Region
The rapid spread of the mystery disease marks an unfortunate new development for the Central African nation that suffered from a previous outbreak in December. That particular outbreak in the southwest of the region was traced back to "acute respiratory infections complicated by malaria," CBS News reported
Officials have long been concerned about diseases jumping from animals to humans in places where the latter typically eats the former. The number of similar outbreaks in the region has increased by more than 60% in the last decade alone.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has suffered from multiple outbreaks in the past few years, such as typhoid, malaria, and anemia. The region also most recently struggled with a pox outbreak that resulted in more than 47,000 suspected cases and killed more than 1,000 people, as per CNN.
