"Illness claims the lives of victims within 24 hours of them contracting the symptoms, which include headache, weight loss and loss of consciousness "

"A 'mysterious' disease that kills patients within 24 hours has claimed at least 18 lives in a south-eastern Nigerian town, the government said.

'Twenty-three people were affected and 18 deaths were recorded,' the Ondo state health commissioner, Dayo Adeyanju, said on Saturday.

The government spokesman for the state, Kayode Akinmade, earlier gave a toll of 17 dead."

Agence France-Presse had the story April 19, 2015. [2]