HCM City increases medical surveillance amid Congo mysterious disease

Accordingly, HCDC’s International Health Quarantine service has been required to work around the clock at Tan Son Nhat International Airport and Ho Chi Minh City Maritime Port to control the risk of infectious diseases entering the city from abroad.

At the airport, medical quarantine officers continuously monitor incoming passengers through a remote body temperature measurement system and are on the lookout for unusual health symptoms.

Depending on disease developments, HCDC will activate the early warning monitoring system at medical examination and treatment facilities and in the community through a network of community health collaborators which currently covers 21 districts and Thu Duc City. They will organise training courses for rapid response teams and units, and work to deploy treatment regimens as soon as suspected cases are detected to prevent the disease from spreading in the community.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health has recommended that people should avoid all travel to epidemic areas unless absolutely necessary.

For those who have traveled to epidemic areas, the department noted that if they detect suspicious symptoms, they should immediately go to a medical facility and provide medical staff with full information about their travel history.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), from October 24 to December 5 the Panzi health zone in Kwango province of the Congo reported 416 cases of unknown disease, with 31 fatalities, marking a mortality rate of 7.6%.

The disease’s symptoms include fever, headache, cough, runny nose, and muscle pain. Most cases are in children, a total of 53% of cases and 54.8% of deaths are under five years old. All severe cases were found to be severely malnourished.