angola battles ebola-like virus killing scores of
Angolan health officials were battling an outbreak of the Marburg virus, related to the killer Ebola, that has claimed the lives of 96 people, mostly children, in northern Uige province.
While there was no move to quarantine the region bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angolan health officials assisted by experts from the World Health Organisation (WHO) were putting in place a series of measures to try to contain the virus.
"We are going to wage a massive information and education campaign and mobilize the community on this illness," said health ministry spokesman Carlos Alberto.
A nurse examines a blood sample A nurse examines a blood sample AFP/File Enlarge
Deputy Health Minister Joseph van Dunem announced at a news conference on Tuesday that the the mysterious illness detected in October last year had been identified as the Marburg virus.
The Marburg disease, a severe form of hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola, was first identified in 1967, affecting simultaneously laboratory workers in Marburg, Germany and also in Frankfurt and Belgrade who had come into contact with infected monkeys from Uganda.
The largest oubreak on record occurred from late 1998 to 2000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing 123 people.
Tests conducted at the US Centers for Disease Control confirmed that the illness that has left scores of children dead in the Uige region, some 300 kilometers (180 miles) north of Luanda, was caused by the Marburg virus.
Of the 107 cases detected thus far in Uige, 96 have been fatal, according to the health ministry. WHO estimates that 75 percent of the victims are children under the age of five.
WHO representative in Angola Diallo Fatoumata Binta said that health officials were stepping up monitoring to try to detect new cases in Uige and other Angolan provinces.
Tests were being conducted in Luanda on the body of a man who had displayed the same symptoms to determine whether the virus could have spread to the capital, said the deputy health minister.
The health ministry had also ordered that the bodies of the victims be buried immediately to prevent possible contagion from burial practices. The virus can be transmitted through contact with bodily fluids of infected people.
Health officials last week said they did not believe that they were dealing with an outbreak of Ebola, which kills by inducing massive internal haemorrhages.
The victims of the Marburg virus can suffer from a severe watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting early on in the illness followed by severe chest and lung pains, sore throat and cough, according to the WHO.
Many cases result in severe bleeding, beginning from the fifth day and affecting the gastrointestinal tract and the lungs, accompanied by a rash, sometimes involving the entire body.
"The death is due to loss of body fluids and internal bleeding," said Andrew Jamieson, medical director at the Johannesburg-based Netcare travel clinic.
"The only form of cure we have is supportive treatment where a patient gets blood transfusions," he said, adding that there was a high failure rate in treating the disease.
Jamieson said the disease was quite similar to Ebola even though Marburg is a genetically different virus.
"They are not the same virus but share certain characteristics in their genes which make them related, but they are distinct viruses.
"If you do a test for Ebola you will not pick up Marburg virus but they behave similarly and look the same under the microscope," Jamieson told AFP.
Following the outbreak of Marburg in Europe in 1967, the virus reappeared eight years later when a traveller most likely exposed in Zimbabwe Zimbabwe became ill in Johannesburg -- and passed it to his travelling companion and a nurse.
Two other cases were reported in 1980 in Kenya Kenya and there again in 1987.
