Forty-three people have died and 13 others have been infected following an outbreak of pneumonic plague in the mining area of Zobia, in the region of Bas-Uele in Oriental province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), an official in the ministry of health said on Monday.
The ministry’s director of epidemiology, Dr Benoit Kebele Ilunga, said the epidemic showed up three weeks ago in one of the mines in the diamond-rich area.
He said the 13 infected survivors have responded well to antibiotics. Samples from the infected people analysed at the Bio-Medical Research Institute in the capital, Kinshasa, confirmed the plague.
A medical team comprising representatives from the NGO Médécins sans Frontières, Medair, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) and the ministry of health has assessed the situation in the area, Ilunga said.
Another team of experts, made up of specialists from the WHO in Geneva and its African offices, and from the Pasteur Institute in Madagascar, also conducted further studies on Monday at the site of the epidemic.
”The epidemic of pneumonic plague is well confirmed in this area,” Dr Jean-Marie Yanehogo, in charge of epidemics at the WHO, said. ”The WHO sent a research team to gather all available evidence.”
According to the WHO, of three forms of the plague, the pneumonic variety is the most virulent. It is prevalent in the Zobia area because of poor hygiene and rats, which are a vector for the disease.
The disease is transmitted from animals and humans by the bite of infected fleas, direct contact, inhalation or, rarely, ingestion of infective bodies. The plague has a case-fatality ratio of 30% to 60%, if untreated.
A major challenge that remains for health officials in the DRC is how to contain the epidemic.
Kebele said the major difficulty was to find all the people who may have contracted the infection and who may have left the Zobia mine while the disease was still in its incubation period.
”They [people] may develop the disease in another mine and so propagate the epidemic,” Kebele said.
About 7 000 miners live in Zobia. Medical officials are now looking for 2 000 of them who worked in Zobia when the epidemic broke out.
The mine was closed in 2004 when several cases of plague were detected. However, the mine was reopened on December 14 2004, but only one week later, new cases of the plague reappeared. — Irin