Overview
- Health officials report roughly 35 illnesses and five deaths from an unknown disease centered in Burundi’s Mpanda district near the DRC border.
- Most known patients belong to one household or are close contacts, and health workers have issued alerts to people exposed to the sick.
- Symptoms reported include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, blood in urine, fatigue, and abdominal pain, with severe cases showing jaundice and anemia.
- Early laboratory results are negative for Ebola, Marburg, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, so the cause remains unidentified.
- Burundi’s Ministry of Health is leading the response with WHO support, deploying specialist teams and sending samples to the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research for advanced testing.