Zimbabweans get Marburg warning
2005-05-08 20:43
Special Report
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, accused of ethnic cleansing and bankrupting his country, has been appointed by the UN to become the new international envoy for tourism, a report says.
Harare - Zimbabwe is warning its citizens against travelling to Angola following the outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus which has claimed 280 lives, the health minister said on Sunday.
"People should not fear but I am discouraging people from travelling to Angola... at this point in time," said health and child welfare minister David Parirenyatwa on state-run Newsnet TV.
"We are aware that the countries around Angola have taken alert measures. We in Zimbabwe are on very high alert to make sure anybody who comes in, especially through the airports...we screen them, we thoroughly screen them for that virus," he said.
Zimbabwe has not recorded any case of the deadly virus that has left 280 dead in Angola since it was first detected in October, with most of the fatalities in the northern Uige province of Angola.
The Marburg virus, whose exact origin is unknown and for which there is no cure, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood, excrement, vomit, saliva, sweat and tears, but can be contained with relatively simple hygenic precautions, according to experts.
The outbreak in Angola has overtaken an earlier outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the largest ever recorded of the virus, first detected in 1967 when West German laboratory workers in the town of Marburg were infected by monkeys from Uganda.
- SAPA