A mysterious illness causes panic in Ivory Coast, West Africa. Children and old people die quickly and without explanation. Information provided by AFP.
A resident named Amena Jaha told AFP about how the illness befell her family. “At night, the grandson became ill, in the morning he died,” he comments. Some 20 children have died suddenly in Kpo Kahancro in central Ivory Coast in recent months.
In villages, suspicions of the disease range from mystical beliefs to bacterial contamination. “In one night they took away my grandson, a child who was a year and a few months old and was just crawling,” Amena Jaha said.
She says that on December 2, in Kpo-Kahankro, six children began to vomit. Their bodies froze and their eyes rolled back before they died within hours.
By the end of January, when the unrest of the population dissipated, about 15 people died suddenly under the same circumstances, mostly children and the elderly. In Bouaké, dozens of residents were hospitalized due to illness.
“People knocked on my door and shouted: “The story begins again,” recalls Dorothea Kouame Au. She lost her three year old granddaughter. “I haven’t even been able to see my little princess again since she died. I miss her,” the 46-year-old grandmother complained.
“It’s something mystical,” says Nanan Coffey Patrice, the village headman.
origin of the disease
In Kpo-Kahancro, the news is that there is a “fetish”, that is, an object with mystical power, which is in the house of François Kouame Kouadio, the leader of the village, and which will cause misfortunes for him. below the community. The dissertation was accepted by the Bouake court.
On Thursday (9), the court sentenced Kouadio and the “fetishist” accused of assembling the object to five years in prison for “acts of quackery and disturbing the peace.”
Faced with the crisis, members of the government made several trips to Kpo Kahankro. Autopsies were carried out on some of the bodies, which have not yet been returned to their families.
Medical authorities say it’s an infection with Clostridium, a bacteria found in “fetishes” that can cause severe symptoms in children and the elderly. The official balance is 16 dead, although residents counted 21, 18 of whom were children.
This conclusion convinces the villagers, although it does not completely reassure the local population. “I am glad that the fetish was unearthed, this is what killed our children,” said Amena Jaha.
“My grandson has never had contact with this object. He hardly walked and never left the yard,” adds a woman who lives hundreds of meters from the site of infection.
“We fear”
“All a child needs is to come into contact with bacteria and then put their hand to their mouth to get sick. It can infect toys, objects and therefore other children,” explained the director of the National Institute of Public Hygiene (INHP), Joseph Beigner Bi Vro, who led the analysis.
After several days of interruption for further testing, the water supply was restored. Since then the deaths have stopped. “Of course we are afraid,” says Paul Kouassi, president of the youth association in the village.
*According to the AFP agency.
Source: Ndmais
