Killer disease stumps health execs in Zambo Norte village

ZAMBOANGA CITY—Health officials are grappling for answers, and for the identity of a disease that has killed at least four people and laid low residents of a remote fishing village in Sibuco, Zamboanga del Norte.

Dr. Aristides Tan, director of the Department of Health in Western Mindanao, said health workers have been grappling for answers to the mysterious disease.

“We are very puzzled, even our toxicologists are wondering what this disease is,” he said.

Tan said laboratory samples taken from the victims and the village’s surroundings had been gathered and sent to Manila for analysis.

Dr. Romeo Ong, hospital director of Zamboanga City Medical Center where at least 16 residents of the village of Mantebo had been admitted since May, said health officials were expecting the results to come in next week.

Symptoms

Ong said the patients showed similar symptoms such as coughing, fever and mild paralysis of the lower body.

Those who died of the mysterious illness did so shortly after being brought to hospitals, according to Derileen Edding, Sibuco, the health chief.

She cited the case of 23-year-old Hadjiban Abdurahman, who died 18 hours after being hospitalized on June 11.

“All the patients, according to their relatives, complained of cough, fever then numbness of the lower parts of their bodies,” Edding said.

“The illness progresses so fast,” she added.

Tan said health officials had initially suspected, based on the symptoms manifested by the patients, that it could be marine toxin poisoning.

Nervous system

But then the manifestations were also symptoms of heavy metal poisoning and the Guillain-Barre Syndrome. The latter is a serious disorder that occurs when the body’s immune system attacks part of the nervous system. This would result in nerve inflammation and causes muscle weakness.

“That is why we need to determine first what is causing the problem so we can address it,” Tan said, adding that among those extracted from patients for laboratory analysis were spinal fluids.

Sibuco Mayor Norbideiri Edding said health experts were expected to go to Mantebo on July 7 to conduct further investigation.

He said the local government was informed that at least 20 more patients were being treated by relatives at home.

Mantebo is a remote village of Sibuco and residents travel by sea because the road that leads to it from the town’s center is so dilapidated nobody wants to use it.

Basic service

Health services are hard to come by in remote parts of the country although some officials, particularly in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), are receiving much needed aid to provide healthcare to their people.

The ARMM health program was recently the recipient of refrigerators for  vaccines and other equipment from the US government.

Some of the refrigerators, according to ARMM health chief Dr. Kadil Sinolinding, could run through solar power.