MARBURG EPIDEMIC NOT OVER: WHO
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Angolan health officials say the country’s deadly outbreak of Marburg Virus is under control, despite warnings from international medical organisations that it may worsen.
Angola’s Deputy Health Minister Jose Van Dunem said the government has managed to contain infections to the northern Uige province, with no new cases reported in other areas.
Poor roads out of the town of the same name have apparently helped keep the Ebola-like disease in check.
While people outside the province have fallen ill with the virus, the government said they had all visited Uige.
Officials have confirmed 235 deaths since the epidemic began in October, most of them children.
Another 22 people are infected.
It is the world’s worst outbreak since 123 people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2000.
A statement from Angola’s health ministry and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said an additional 513 people are under surveillance.
“We don’t think that it is over,” David Daigle of the WHO said of the haemorrhagic fever.
“The numbers are still going up.”
A team of top virologists, epidemiologists and anthropologists from the WHO and Medecins sans Frontieres arrived in Uige last month.
The paediatric ward of the local hospital has been identified as the likely source of the initial outbreak.
Mr Daigle said efforts to assess Marburg’s spread and warn villagers had been hampered by residents shunning health workers and hospitals.
He said local musicians and anthropologists had worked on recording a Marburg prevention song, now being broadcast on the radio and truck-mounted loudspeakers, to overcome the problem.
Marburg can kill a healthy person in a week, inducing vomiting and diarrhoea, followed by severed fever.
The disease is spread through contact with bodily fluids, such as sweat, saliva and blood.
It is not treatable with any known drugs.
SOURCE: World News
STORY ARCHIVE
'''April 19, 2005'''

Angola marked''credit: Vardion of Wikipedia
Fearing that burial rites might be the cause of more cases of the Marburg virus, WHO spokesman Dave Daigle says the transmission cycle has not yet been broken. Cases of persons fallen ill by the virus outside the province of Uige are reportedly connected to visits to that region.

The burial custom there for most families includes the preparation of the body, and kissing and embracing the deceased. The epidemic spreads through contact with body fluids.

The death toll so far, stands at 235 in the epidemic. The Ebola-like fever cannot be treated with any known drugs. The best protection is wearing masks and gloves when in contact with a carrier.
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