Unknown illness kills over 50 in Congo with hours between symptoms and death
46 comments
·February 25, 2025perching_aix
ben_w
Before your edit I was going to link to this, much the same info: https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/...
cjcenizal
The article notes there are regions where "wild animals are popularly eaten."
ssfrr
I saw that phrase and thought it was pretty weird. Hunting wild animals for food is not some fringe thing that happens in "other places" I've eaten tons of fish, duck, deer, elk, etc. that were all "wild animals".
kamaal
I think people think of Carnivorous animals, when then they think of wild animals.
Simply put, you catch fewer(near 0) infections eating plants. Even more so for animals in the wild.
Vox_Leone
I praise apnews for using "Unknown Illness" instead of the dark pattern-ish "Mysterious Disease", so to the taste of the likes of CNN. Small steps towards reason.
orwin
AP is usually less clickbaity than 'commercial' news.
raphman
Continuously updated Flutrackers.com thread: https://flutrackers.com/forum/forum/africa/emerging-diseases...
jackcosgrove
Why are bats so often a vector? Is it because they are airborne mammals? Meaning they can cover a lot of ground and come in contact with a lot of other vectors, and also have biology more similar to humans than, say, birds?
I am aware that birds are also a common vector, but bats seem to be the greater risk.
ceejayoz
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9168486/
> In vitro work has suggested that molecular adaptations that support the physiology of flight, a trait unique to bats among mammals, may allow bats to tolerate rapidly replicating viruses that express heightened virulence upon emergence in less tolerant hosts such as humans — thus offering a possible explanation for bat virus virulence. Bats and birds share a suite of convergent flight adaptations—both taxa are remarkably long-lived for their body size and appear to circumvent metabolic constraints on longevity through cellular pathways evolved to mitigate oxidative stress induced by flight.
DamnInteresting
A colleague of mine wrote about the bat-eating problem in 2006: https://www.damninteresting.com/the-hazards-of-eating-bats/
(Technically this is a self-link, but it wasn't written by me, and there are no ads or the like)
michpoch
Is eating bats in Congo a cultural thing? Or this is just some random idea of these kids?
Cornbilly
Many African cultures have a tradition of eating “bushmeat” (ie. meat from wild animals).
It’s not dissimilar to the tradition of hunting deer/rabbit/etc in the west (which has its own concerns about a disease jumping species like chronic wasting disease aka Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans). However, the diversity of Africa’s “bushmeat” and the economic conditions in some areas seem to increase the chances of a zoonotic disease spreading to humans.
redwood
I read through a bunch of other articles on this and have not been able to find anything that has more details than this specific article. Sounds like it's possible that it's a malaria variant but far too early to tell
Palomides
almost certainly something like marburg, which has been found there before and is carried by bats
highwaylights
Article mentions testing negative for Marburg, but obviously very concerning
giantg2
Pretty sure malaria won't cause hemorrhagic symptoms.
ceejayoz
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9036688/
> In recent years there have been reports of viral haemorrhagic fever (VHF) epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa where malaria is endemic. VHF and malaria have overlapping clinical presentations making differential diagnosis a challenge.
giantg2
That's for initial presentation, not disease progression. You might want to read and understand the article before you post it.
"Most VHFs and malaria initially present with similar non-specific symptoms and signs of fever, headache, joint pains and weaknesses, posing challenges in differential diagnosis"
gwbas1c
Pathogens evolve:
FWIW: Mutations that cause the pathogen to kill the host quickly often "hurt" the pathogen because it doesn't have a chance to spread to other hosts. Hopefully this illness spreads "slowly enough" that this mutation has a poor chance of surviving.
card_zero
This effect is unfortunately balanced out by ways of killing the host that spray body fluids everywhere in large amounts and help transmission.
I mean it's still better for the pathogen if it can accomplish that and keep the host alive, but that's real finesse.
delichon
I read that these super fast killing ebola cousins emerge periodically but seldom spread far exactly because they kill before the infected person can travel far. Fingers and toes crossed that this idea is more than cope.
Miraltar
Question is, can you spread it before the symptoms appear ? Because if the disease kills in less than 48h, it is indead pretty hard to spread.
feverzsj
Unless someone weaponizes it.
ceejayoz
Ebola's been around for ~50 years with no apparent weaponization. Not every pathogen is conducive to being weaponized, nor is the "brilliant but willing to contract Ebola" list likely to be super long.
cameldrv
The Soviets did with Marburg though which is closely related. Allegedly the head of the program Nikolai Ustinov was killed when he was infected in an accident.
null
croisillon
Do they mean Bolobo? Can't find a Boloko Congo on Google Maps, only Boloko Nigeria.
null
dist-epoch
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soygem
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misiti3780
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ceejayoz
I mean, American kids are eating chicken during a bird flu outbreak.
misiti3780
a bit different lol
ceejayoz
How so? Americans eat various mammals, birds, etc., including ones they hunt themselves. We have plenty of opportunities of our own to contract zoonotic diseases. What makes a bat weirder than, say, a duck?
Is eating bats a part of the cuisine in Congo, or where did those children get the idea from?
Edit: oh, there's a hunger crisis going on there apparently, nevermind. Of its approx. 106M strong population, ~26M are experiencing acute food insecurity. [0] They're also in active conflict with Rwanda? [1]
Edit #2: apparently it is part of the cuisine also, see replies below and elsewhere in the thread. [2]
[0] https://www.wfp.org/emergencies/drc-emergency
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–2024_Democratic_Republic_...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat