The news reaching us from Luanda, the capital of the Republic of Angola, are not good, especially since they show an epidemic raging there. It is yellow fever. This pathology, we learn of sources, safe do not give much chance to the victims before death ensues.
Our sources contacted on site did not give us exactly all information, including the duration of the disease in Luanda and the number of victims already registered so far.
However, we were able to realize, in Kinshasa, the damage caused by this disease, compared to the number of funerals held here and there, in Kinshasa in families whose members have died in Luanda, following the yellow fever .
Recently, Radio Top Congo, relayed this information, indicating that subjects with this disease have been detected, including one from Noki, an Angolan town near the city of Matadi. This patient would come to care for the Kinkanda Reference General Hospital. While the other victim was recorded Songololo, a territory of frontier Kongo Central with Angola.
As we returned, the Kongo Central Zone chief physician would have taken necessary measures in order to protect this space. But more important to do, we hope, would be to have emergency health teams at the different border posts separating us from the neighboring country in order to carry out systematic controls and, if necessary, carry out vaccinations, to prevent the spread of this disease on Congolese territory, starting with the Kongo Central where suspected cases have already been detected.
Unsafe main cause of this disease
According to the feedback we have collected from Luanda, the main cause of this disease is linked to unhealthy glaring that reign in some parts of the city including the suburbs where you can see piles of garbage, the populations sides. Those who refuse to become the long houses of flies, mosquitoes and other critters agents vectors of every disease. And this gets worse during the rainy season, during which, people have serious public health problems.
This situation contrasts, however, with the upper town where everything breathes well-being, our sources reported.
But what is yellow fever?
According to the medical dictionary for tropical regions, written by Bernard and Pierre Géneviève, yellow fever is defined as an infectious disease, endemic and acute epidermal, due to a virus. Admiral virus transmitted by the bite of a mosquito Aedes genus. This fever is characterized in its severe form two phases of high fever separated by a period of decreasing temperature called red phase. The latter remark by headache, back pain, vomiting, facial congestion and albuminuria conjunction. While the yellow phase is characterized by albuminuria, jaundice, purpura, melena, hematuria and black blood vomiting. There are several benign forms but overall, the disease causes significant mortality. It is effectively prevented by the yellow fever vaccine (Editor’s note our apologies for these technical terms).
But whatever may be said, a potential danger is at our door, it is therefore necessary that practical steps be taken before this epidemic crosses our territory, especially when it is necessary to imagine the scale of the traffic between the people of these two neighboring countries which, in this case, it is practically out of the question to consider the closure of borders, given the centuries-old ties between the people of these two neighboring countries.
