Marburg fears stop hugs
2005-04-14 22:36
Uige - Fearful of a rare and deadly virus that has killed 210 people, inhabitants of this northern Angolan city have given up their traditional greeting of wrapping friends and acquaintances in a hug.
Locals welcomed a reporter on Thursday by touching right legs covered by trousers - a new custom devised to help check the spread of the Ebola-like Marburg virus which is passed by contact with bodily fluids and has no cure.
Disease experts from the World Health Organisation, the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders and the US centres for disease control and prevention are in Uige, trying to stamp out the disease.
The WHO said in its latest bulletin the death toll had climbed to 210 by April 11, with 190 of the deaths reported in Uige, where the outbreak was believed to have started six months ago.
The agency said medical teams were focussing their efforts on detecting cases and quickly isolating them, as well as collecting bodies for swift burial.
Security remained a major concern for health workers, the UN health agency said.
Hostile villagers were continuing to throw rocks at medical teams when they arrive to contain the outbreak.
Security concerns
"There are serious security concerns in some provinces," said David Daigle, WHO spokesperson.
"We've got to make the people understand what we are trying to do."
Foreign experts have recruited traditional healers and Roman Catholic Church leaders to help educate locals about the disease.
They are giving talks at markets and schools, the WHO said.
Foreign aid groups say panicked locals are hiding infected family members, fearing they might never see them again if they are taken to isolation units.
"It's still looking really messy," WHO spokesperson Maria Cheng said from the agency's Geneva headquarters.
"We don't know where we are with the outbreak yet. We can't tell yet when it will peak. It could be very early stages."
The last outbreak of Marburg haemorrhagic fever, which occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo, lasted from 1998 to 2000.
That outbreak, which until now was the biggest, killed 128 people.
- SAPA