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Unknown deadly illness strikes western Congo

(NYT) — An unidentified illness has killed scores of people and infected hundreds in Congo, the World Health Organization has reported, with preliminary investigations tracing the outbreak to three children who in January ate a bat and died.

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Fifty-three people in the country’s northwest had died from the disease, out of 431 reported cases as of Feb. 15, and “with nearly half of the deaths occurring within 48 hours of symptom onset” in one of two identified clusters, according to a weekly bulletin published by the WHO’s Africa office.

“The outbreak, which has seen cases rise rapidly within days, poses a significant public health threat,” the report said, and “the exact cause remains unknown.”

Victims’ symptoms have included fever, vomiting, diarrhea and body aches, among others. The children who perished from the illness also had bled from the nose and vomited blood.

The link to a bat may be significant, because viruses in bats are known to cause a number of other diseases in humans. Bats are thought to be natural reservoirs for Marburg and Ebola viruses, two hemorrhagic fevers that are the source of ongoing outbreaks in the region, and a bat virus appears to have been a precursor to the COVID-19 virus.

The disease, which has infected people in Congo’s Équateur province, has been fatal in more than 12% of cases. Investigators identified an initial outbreak in Boloko Village that spread to nearby Danda Village, the WHO said. A second, larger outbreak occurred in Bomate Village and has infected more than 400 people.

The investigators sent 18 samples to Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, for testing, ruling out Ebola and Marburg viruses.

Last year, an unknown flulike illness infected hundreds of people in the southwestern part of the country. It was later found to likely be respiratory infections complicated by malaria.

Utah to ban fluoride in public water

(NYT) — Utah could soon become the first U.S. state to ban the addition of fluoride to drinking water.

On Friday, the Utah state Senate approved a bill that prohibits adding the mineral to public water systems. If signed by Gov. Spencer Cox, the measure would go into effect May 7. The governor has not publicly commented on whether he supports the bill.

The passage of the Utah bill comes roughly two weeks after the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary. In November, Kennedy vowed that the Trump administration would “advise all U.S. systems to remove fluoride from public water.”

In 2022, about 44% of Utah residents supplied with public drinking water were drinking fluoridated water. Fluoride added to drinking water prevents cavities, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has heralded fluoridation as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.

Opponents of water fluoridation, including Utah state Rep. Stephanie Gricius, who introduced the bill, argue that the chemical could have harmful neurological effects on fetuses and young children. In a recent review paper, the National Institutes of Health analyzed the results of 74 studies and concluded that high levels of fluoride exposure were linked with lower IQ scores in childhood.

Power outages sweep across Chile

(Reuters) — Chile’s government imposed a curfew and declared a state of emergency in response to a blackout that cut electricity to most of the country and plunged the streets of the capital, Santiago, into chaos Tuesday.

The massive outage, which began in the afternoon, affected 8 million households in the South American nation of 19 million people, officials said. The affected area spanned 600 miles, from Arica, the northernmost city, to Los Lagos in the south, officials said. In Santiago, it knocked out traffic lights, stranded people in elevators and shut down the subway network.

Hours later, the government announced a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the regions affected by the outage. Schools in those regions will be closed Wednesday, with about 300,000 students affected, officials said.

As officials scrambled to restore power, chaotic scenes played out in Santiago as nonfunctioning traffic lights snarled roads and masses of commuters were evacuated from the subway, spilling out onto the streets and vying for spots on replacement buses.

Military plane crash in Sudan kills at least 46

PORT SUDAN, Sudan (NYT) — The crash of a military aircraft in a residential area of Sudan’s capital killed at least 46 people, regional officials said Wednesday, adding to the devastation of a city already wrecked by nearly three years of civil war.

It was one of the deadliest plane crashes in Sudan’s recent history, according to data from the International Civil Aviation Organization, a United Nations agency. The state government in Khartoum, the capital, said in a statement that the dead included passengers on the plane and residents on the ground.

The Sudanese military said in a statement that the plane, an Antonov cargo aircraft, had crashed Tuesday evening while taking off from the Wadi Seidna air base just outside Khartoum. It did not identify the cause of the crash or provide details about the passengers who were killed.

The crash also injured at least 10 people in one city block in Al-Thawra, a residential neighborhood not far from the air base, the state government said.