New Congo death suggests mystery outbreak could be more than just malaria

A man in the Democratic Republic of Congo died on Thursday with haemorrhagic fever symptoms, leading officials to suspect that a still-unidentified virus may be involved alongside malaria in a mysterious outbreak that has killed dozens of people, health authorities said.

Congo authorities said last week that they suspected malaria in the flu-like disease outbreak, which has killed at least 37 people and in which more than four out of five patients have tested positive for malaria.

But the death of the man with haemorrhagic fever – not normally associated with parasite-caused malaria – could indicate a virus at work as well.

The man died on Thursday in the remote Panzi area of Kwango province where the outbreak has been recorded, Africa Centre for Disease Control and Prevention official Ngashi Ngongo told reporters.

That has led to a working hypothesis that the outbreak is either “severe malaria on a background of malnutrition” or “a viral infection that is happening on the background of malaria”, Ngongo said.

Malaria is endemic in the Panzi area, where there also are high levels of malnutrition, complicating the diagnosis of the latest outbreak.