It sounded like the plot of a disaster movie: a mysterious disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appeared to jump from a bat to three children who ate it. They died within two days of developing symptoms. Those symptoms included diarrhea, vomiting, and internal bleeding. Within 21 days of the first reported case, 53 people had died and more than 400 developed symptoms. People were, to put it lightly, getting worried.
Scientists had initially feared this spread could represent another Ebola-like crisis — since that disease originated in animals, then jumped to humans, sickening and killing a large number of people. People can now rest a bit easier, since the disease’s origins appear to have been linked to contaminated water. At a World Health Organization (WHO) press conference, a WHO expert said that, in the hardest hit villages, people tended to share the same water source.
“If it is a contamination, it will be easy to contain,” Steve Ahuka, a virologist at the National Institute of Biomedical Research in Kinshasa said at the news conference. Ahuka is testing patient samples from affected communities.
Examining the Infectious Disease
Before finding the source of the cases, scientists first ruled out Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic viruses via testing, according to a WHO report. Those viruses also appeared as unlikely culprits, because death after symptoms generally happens over a longer period of time.
About half the people tested were positive for malaria. That disease likely killed dozens of people in another part of Congo in 2024.
The assumption that the disease originated in a bat is not particularly far-fetched. The WHO has long been concerned about diseases jumping from animal to human in places where wild animals are often consumed. The WHO estimates that such outbreaks in Africa increased by over 60 percent over the past decade.
There have long been concerns about diseases jumping from animals to humans in places where wild animals are popularly eaten. The number of such outbreaks in Africa has surged by more than 60 percent in the last decade, the WHO said in 2022.
Read More: What You Need To Know About The Marburg Virus
Complex Disease Origins
It may be difficult to identify a single cause for numerous sicknesses in the DRC. Since 2025, scientists have identified multiple clusters of undiagnosed illnesses within two “health zones” of the DRC’s Equateur province.
Those clusters of undiagnosed illness have sickened 1,096 people in all age groups, causing 60 deaths, according to the WHO report. Although the cases include a range of symptoms includes fever, headache, chills, sweating, achy bodies, runny or bleeding noses, cough, vomiting, and diarrhea, it is possible that more than one disease could be causing them, since those symptoms cover a broad range of illnesses.
Some illnesses and deaths could be caused by a combination of issues. For instance, last year several people in the DRC died of respiratory infections that were worsened by malaria.
Although the possible resolution of the outbreak initially attributed to an infectious bat isn’t exactly a Hollywood ending, it is still a better result than a scenario equivalent to a streaming series about people fleeing from a killer virus.
Article Sources
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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
