Marian van der Snoek (Medical coordinator)
On February 7thin Isiro, Medair received
an alert concerning an unidentified epidemic bearing all the signs of pneumonia.
Patients were complaining of high fever, coughing up blood-stained sputum,
difficulties breathing, and many of them died after only 3 days of illness.
Over 40 people had died in a diamond mining area near Zobia, in the North-East of Congo. This area located in the tropical rainforest is difficult to access due to very bad roads and practically no means of communication.
While alerting the medical authorities, Medair sent 2 experts with staff from the provincial authorities and two other NGOs (MSF Belgium and MSF Switzerland) to the region of Zobia.
As the disease clinically looked like pneumonic plague, the survey team immediately started to train the local health personnel to distinguish this disease from others and to give the appropriate treatment. Thanks to Medair and MSF Belgium, emergency essential drugs were immediately made available to key health centres close to the open mining area, the epicentre of this epidemic.
Health information was provided to the communities through key authorities and leaders.
In 2 days, 100 new suspected cases were found in communities thought to be at risk, and were given the correct treatment. Blood and sputum analyses were made on more than 20 patients and the confirmation of pneumonic plague came both through rapid tests done in the clinics and from the Kinshasa bio-medical institute.
Another problem the team is now facing lies in the fact that many people have fled the immediate mining area out of fear of the disease and due to recent insecurity. We are coordinating with other humanitarian actors to cover the affected region and to visit every health centre in the areas to which people might have fled.
Medair has already sent out 12 experienced local health supervisors with special medicines to visit the ca 50 health structures and to pre-position the appropriate drugs. The supervisors travel thousands of kilometres on motorbikes to train and support health staff in the affected areas so that they can identify and treat patients properly.
Medair is dedicated to actively research new cases so that the epidemic may be kept under control as much as possible in this very challenging terrain.