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Affected fishermen accuse an unidentified boat that spilled chemicals into the sea, according to the Senegalese press.
More than 1,000 fishermen in Senegal have been affected by a disease that causes rashes and which they claim to have contracted on the high seas, despite its origin being unknown at the moment, the director-general of public health told Efe Wednesday. in Senegal, Marie Khemesse Ngom Ndiaye.
“Only the fishermen who left for the (affected) area contracted the disease. When they returned to their families, they did not get sick. At the moment we have not seen any secondary cases,” explained to Efe Ndiaye, an official of the Ministry of Health. Senegalese.
Affected fishermen accuse an unidentified boat that spilled chemicals into the sea, according to reports to the Senegalese press.
In total, 1,004 cases have been reported, most of them in the capital Dakar but also in other regions such as Thiès (60 kilometers east of Dakar), Saint Louis (north-west) and Kolda (south).
The first case was found on November 12 in a 20-year-old man with “non-generalized vesicular rash, swelling of the face, dry lips and red eyes,” according to a report of an investigation started on November 17 in the Mbao district. , on the outskirts of Dakar.
The same document indicated that those affected are male fishermen aged between 13 and 46 years residing in various locations in Senegal who “have skin lesions on the face, extremities and sometimes on the external genitalia”.
On November 19, the Senegalese Ministry of the Environment took samples of seawater and fish from the area where fishermen insisted they contracted the disease.
According to the laboratory report, published on 21 November, “the almost permanent presence” of “phthalic acid, sulfur, benzene dicarboxylic acid and hexadecanoic acid” was found in the four water samples.
But “no chemicals have been found, or anything specific that could cause these injuries. What has been found are quantities so small that they cannot be responsible for the disease,” the director general of public health told Efe.
Additionally, authorities ruled out a possible relationship with COVID-19 after carrying out detection tests – which came back negative – and according to Ndiaye, the Pasteur Institute hasn’t found any infectious agents either.
Since this Tuesday, the authorities have focused on analyzing algae and fishermen’s nets, in case they contain toxic products.
“We will use all available means in Senegal and (…) ask other countries if they have not suffered from a similar disease in this or other years. We have the Poison Control Center working with its national and international collaborators,” he said the expert.
Although the authorities have assured the population that the fish can be eaten without risk to health, much of the population avoids it despite being a staple in this West African nation.
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