The CDC is closely monitoring an "unknown disease” that has killed dozens in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the agency said in a statement on Monday.

World Health Organization officials said the outbreak appeared to originate from a village where three children died after reportedly eating a bat carcass.

An unknown illness first discovered in three children who ate a bat has rapidly killed more than 50 people in northwestern Congo over the past five weeks, health experts say.

The World Health Organization has confirmed multiple outbreak clusters of an unidentified illness. Hundreds have become sick and dozens have died. The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed that a worrying mystery illness is spreading in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The outbreak has been traced, tentatively, to three children who ate a bat, the W.H.O. said, and known threats like Ebola and Marburg have been ruled out.

Gutting USAID is already having a devastating impact around the world. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, teams that would normally be racing to identify a fatal sickness are gone.

Is a new virus causing a disease outbreak and deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or is the cause already known to science?

Reports of a large number of unexplained illnesses and deaths in Equateur province have garnered international attention, likely in part because this region of DRC has had several Ebola outbreaks in recent years.