Kenya mystery disease kills 19 more

A further 19 people have died in eastern Kenya from a mysterious disease that is believed to be connected with the deadly Ebola virus, Kenyan KTN commercial TV said on Tuesday.

The latest deaths occurred in Garissa District, just one day after reports that the unknown disease had claimed a total of 143 lives in the same region over the previous three days.

A doctor said the victims had lost blood through all their body openings and their mucous membranes.

The doctor, a foreign aid worker, "dismissed press reports linking the disease with Ebola", the TV said.

The provincial medical health officer, Dr Abdi Hasan, said the nature of the disease could not immediately be established.

Reports on Monday quoted a top local official as saying the symptoms included acute malaria, diarrhoea and high fever, as well as bleeding from the nose and vomiting blood.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.