Tanzania has asked medical experts to investigate a mysterious “contagious” disease that has already killed five people in the country.

The disease was identified in “seven people with symptoms such as fever, vomiting, bleeding and kidney failure,” the country’s health ministry said in a statement late in the evening.

Doctors were sent to the Kangera region in the northwest of the country, bordering Uganda, to investigate the contagious disease.

“Samples were taken from patients and the deceased to determine the origin and type of disease,” Health Ministry spokeswoman Tumaini Nagu said, urging the public to remain calm.

This event followed the Ebola virus epidemic in Uganda, which lasted almost four months and caused the death of 55 people. Uganda announced the end of the epidemic in January.

Last year, an outbreak of leptospirosis, also known as “mouse disease,” was identified in Tanzania, killing three people in Lidi County in the country’s southeast.

This bacterial disease, which is transmitted to humans from certain mammals, may be present in water or food contaminated with the urine of infected animals.

Source: APE-MPE, AFP.