A mysterious disease has killed five people in Tanzania. It appears to be a communicable disease, which has become a serious concern for health experts in the East African country. The public health authorities are currently investigating it and they have revealed that the symptoms have already been detected in seven more people. The government has sent a team of experts to the Kagera region, in the northwestern part of the country which shares its border with Uganda, to investigate the cases.

The information was given by health official Tumaini Nagu, a member of Tanzania’s health ministry, reported Africa News. She further revealed that symptoms included fever, vomiting, bleeding and kidney failure. “Samples have been taken from patients and the dead to identify the source and type of disease,” she said in a statement.

Tumaini requested the people to remain calm and informed that the mysterious disease has been noticed in people after a four-month-long Ebola outbreak in Uganda that killed 55 people. Tanzania also identified an outbreak right before its current unknown disease, which was identified to be leptospirosis or “rat disease” that killed three people in Lindi, a southeastern region of the country.

Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that is transmitted to humans by either mammals or through food and water contaminated by urine or faeces of the infected animal.

Last year, a disease with symptoms such as fever, fatigue, headache and nosebleeds was detected in the same Lindi region and the government’s chief medical officer Aifello Sichalwe responded to it by forming a team of professionals. All these patients had tested negative for Ebola, Marburg virus and Covid-19. A total of 13 patients had these symptoms, three of whom had died and one recovered. The rest were isolated.

Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan earlier said that the unknown disease might have been caused by increased interactions between humans and animals as a result of environmental degradation.

No further information is available about the current disease in Tanzania and officials are hard at work to understand the outbreak.

Read all the Latest Buzz News here