GENEVA - An outbreak of plague at a diamond mine in Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 61 miners and infected hundreds, sparking a panicked exodus of thousands of people, health officials said on Friday.
The World Health Organization said it was dispatching a team of health experts this weekend to try to contain the highly contagious disease, which can kill its victim within 48 hours.
Many of the 7,000 miners working in Zobia 186 miles north of Kisangani, Congo’s third-biggest city, have fled since the outbreak began two months ago and could have spread the disease, the United Nations agency said.
At least 61
deaths
“The epidemiological data is still incomplete, but we are sure there are
at least 61 deaths. The main problem is that due to panic, maybe two-thirds of
the population, ran away from the mine,” Eric Bertherat, head of the WHO
team, told reporters.
“There is a risk that some patients in incubation run away and maybe arrive in Kisangani. So it is very important to inform health care workers to alert them of the risk of admission of highly contagious patients,” he said.
Kisangani is a major trading center on the Congo River.
Plague, which is spread between rodents by fleas, can also be transmitted to people through infected rodent flea bites. It has a fatality rate of 50 to 60 percent among humans if not treated with antibiotics, WHO says.
There are three main forms of plague in humans and the outbreak in the former Zaire is pneumonic plague, which infects victims’ lungs and can set off human-to-human transmission.
Death within
48 hours
Aid agencies have identified some 400 suspected cases from health care
registers, including the dead, WHO officials said.
“It is very important to quarantine, isolate these people who are sick with pneumonic plague so that the transmission is brought under control. If we can find the cases and treat them effectively this can be stopped,” said May Chu, a WHO expert.
“Death has been known to be as quick as 48 hours, much quicker than the bubonic form, because the lungs rapidly fill up and the patient essentially dies of oxygen deficit,” she said.
A 10-member WHO emergency team was leaving at the weekend with supplies of antibiotics to try to stem the outbreak and ensure that health workers in the region isolated suspect cases.
But the remote mine in mineral-rich Ituri, controlled by an unidentified armed group, is difficult to reach and the team will require U.N. security clearances, officials said.
Although Congo’s war was declared over in 2003, myriad armed groups still operate in much of the country, particularly in eastern regions.
Crowded and
unsanitary conditions
Bertherat said cases were still occurring at the mine, where conditions are
crowded and unsanitary, and 20 workers were admitted to health facilities in
Zobia with symptoms on Wednesday.
Many of the miners appear to have fled to their native villages of Buta and Titule, west of Zobia, he said.
“It seems that many of the miners who ran away from the mine died in the forest or along the trail and it seems there are fresh tombs along the trail,” he said.
The diagnosis of plague had been verified through preliminary testing, a WHO statement said. Forty samples have been taken from patients and are being analyzed at a biomedical institute in Kinshasa.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6993848/
