A World Health Organization task group has been dispatched to South Sudan. A mystery disease in Sudan baffled the country’s health minister. The mystery disease has killed approximately 100 individuals in Fangak, Jonglei State, South Sudan. According to local officials, the sick people’s initial tests tested negative for cholera.
Sheila Baya from WHO while speaking to BBC said, “We decided to send a rapid response team to go and do risk assessment and investigation; that is when they will be able to collect samples from the sick people – but provisionally the figure that we got was that there were 89 deaths.”
Baya went on to say that the scientists had to use a helicopter to go to Fangak. This is due to the region’s heavy flooding.
She went on to say that the group is still waiting for transportation back to Juba, the capital.
The UNHCR previously stated that over 700,000 people were victims of the country’s worst flooding in over 60 years. Communities have been cut off. Thereby, resulting in a significant scarcity of food and other necessities, leading to hunger.
The state’s minister of land, housing, and public utilities, Lam Tungwar Kueigwong, claimed that heavy flooding had also hit the neighboring state of Unity. Malaria has spread more widely as a result of this.