Nearly 400 people, most of them children, have become ill in Angola in what medical investigators suspect is an outbreak of bromide poisoning, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday.
The first cases were identified in October, the agency said. The patients, more than half of them children under age 15, are being treated at a hospital in Cacuaco, in Angola's north, it said.
WHO said it found "extremely high levels of bromide" among the patients. The chemical is commonly used in Angola's oil industry but WHO officials said they are not sure how the patients were exposed.
"We are still in the preliminary stages of investigating this outbreak and have a lot of unanswered questions," said Peter Ben Embarek, a WHO food safety expert. "The problem is that sodium bromide doesn't smell of anything and it looks like salt, so it would be very easy to confuse it with something else," he said.
Bromide, a chemical compound found naturally in such things as sea water, can be toxic in other forms, leading to severe poisoning.
WHO and Angolan health experts suspect the cause of the illness is toxicological, because symptoms include extreme drowsiness and an inability to walk unaided.
Embarek said patients are being treated with salt solutions to help remove the bromide from their bodies.
Health officials are still receiving a steady stream of new cases, with seven more people reporting sickness Thursday. WHO has also sent a team of experts, including doctors, epidemiologists and lab experts, to Angola to help contain the outbreak.
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