(IRIN) – Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are appealing for funds to combat a tropical disease associated with the consumption of insufficiently processed cassava in western Bandundu province, officials said.
“Many villagers do not keep their cassava in water for five days to remove the cyanide before grinding,” Francois Mwakisenda, director of Kahemba heath zone in Bandundu, said.
Five days is the normal period that villagers soak their cassava before drying and pounding it in a mill. However, he said, “they find five days a long period because they don’t have alternative means to get food.”
Provincial health authorities said in the past 10 years the disease had killed about 11,000 people in Bandundu, prompting the governor, Richard Ndambu, to launch a campaign to curb it.
“The aim is to collect US$3 million,” Philipe Akamituna, provincial health minister, said. “We need that money to buy bikes that we will use to go around villages to sensitize people in how to avoid catching Konzo disease.
“We will also use that money to set up radio stations in rural areas that will be informing villagers about the danger,” he told IRIN. “The money will help us train nurses.”
Mwakisenda said three territories were affected. The inhabitants of these areas used to engage in robust trade with neighbouring Angola, but that had stopped.
“We are facing a situation where people don’t have income to buy food such as meat, fish and eggs to balance their diets,” he told IRIN.
 Photo: DDPSC  |
| Women process cassava roots: Local NGOs in western Bandundu Province are encouraging the growing of cassava types that do not have cyanide |
Balbine Ibanda, director of the Catholic Centre in Kahemba, which is taking care of some patients, said many had come too late for treatment. Others had come after failing to be cured by traditional healers.
“You have [families where] both parents are sick with Konzo disease and no-one is able to go to the fields to get food for the family,” she said. “Many people come to our heath centre very late when their sickness worsens [yet] we only apply physiotherapy – there is no cure.”
Both Mwakisenda and Ibanda said they did not have enough physiotherapy equipment. It was also necessary to encourage growing the types of cassava that did not have cyanide, as was being done by local NGOs, with funding from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
“Tied legs”
Konzo disease, according to the World Health Organization, is a tropical myelopathy, characterized by the onset of spastic paraparesis, which occurs as epidemics in rural areas of Africa. Cassava is an important cash crop in Bandundu, but the sellers sometimes reduce the soaking time to one day, resulting in higher cyanogen levels.
This leads to outbreaks of the disease, according to the health agency.
The disease was named Konzo, meaning “tied legs” in local dialects, because it causes irreversible paralysis of the legs in children and women of child-bearing age, according to specialists with the Cassava Cyanide Diseases and Neurolathyrism Network (CCDNN). The network comprises experts working towards the elimination of cyanide poisoning, Konzo, tropical ataxic neuropathy and neurolathyrism.
The onset of paralysis of both legs occurs abruptly, for example, after manual work or a long walk or at night in bed. First described in DRC in 1928, an estimated 100,000 cases were reported in 2004 in four provinces of the DRC that had been affected by prolonged conflict.
Epidemics were also reported in Nampula province, northern Mozambique, during the drought in 1981-82 and war in 1992-93, according to the CCDNN.
