Dar es Salaam
\nTanzania has dispatched a team of health experts to investigate a mysterious disease that has claimed the lives of five people, the government said. The illness was detected in \u201ca total of seven people (with) symptoms including fever, vomiting, bleeding in various body parts and kidney failure,\u201d the health ministry said in a statement released late Thursday. The government has sent a rapid response team to the northwestern region of Kagera which borders Uganda to investigate the \u201ccommunicable disease,\u201d Tanzania\u2019s chief medical officer Tumaini Nagu said in the statement.
\n\u201cSamples have been taken from the patients and the dead in an effort to identify the source and type of illness,\u201d she said, urging the public to remain calm but take precautions to avoid contagion.
\nThe probe follows an Ebola outbreak in Uganda, that lasted nearly four months and claimed the lives of 55 people before the government in January declared an end to it.
\nLast year, Tanzania identified an outbreak of leptospirosis or \u201crat fever\u201d which killed three people in the southeastern region of Lindi.
\nThe bacterial infection is commonly spread through consuming water or food contaminated by infected animal urine.
\nTanzania\u2019s President Samia Suluhu Hassan said at the time that the disease may have been caused by \u201cgrowing interaction\u201d between humans and wild animals as a result of environmental degradation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dar es Salaam Tanzania has dispatched a team of health experts to investigate a mysterious disease that has claimed the lives of five people, the government said. The illness was detected in \u201ca total of seven people (with) symptoms including fever, vomiting, bleeding in various body parts and kidney failure,\u201d the health ministry said in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-320208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n