Authorities say Tanzania has asked medical experts to investigate a mysterious “contagious” disease that has already claimed five lives in the country.
The disease was detected in “seven people with symptoms such as fever, vomiting, bleeding and kidney failure,” the Ministry of Health said in a press release issued late Thursday evening.
Medical experts have been dispatched to Kagera district (northwest), bordering Uganda, to investigate this “contagious” disease, said health official Tumaini Nago.
“Samples were taken from the sick and the deceased to determine the source and type of disease,” it said in a statement, calling on residents to remain calm.
This case comes after an epidemic episode of the Ebola virus in Uganda that lasted nearly four months and claimed the lives of 55 people. Uganda declared the end of the epidemic in January.
Last year, Tanzania identified an epidemic of leptospirosis, or “rat disease,” that killed three people in the Lindi region (southeast).
This bacterial disease, transmitted to humans by some mammals, is spread through water or food contaminated with the urine of infected animals.
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