Fatal virus: Death toll climbs
2005-03-24 14:41
Luanda - The death toll from an outbreak in northern Angola of the Marburg virus, an Ebola-like bug, has risen to 98 following the death of two nurses, a health official said late on Wednesday.
Angolan health officials are battling to contain the outbreak detected in October in the northern Uige province that has claimed the lives of scores of children.
"Two nurses died on Tuesday of the Marburg illness at the Uige provincial hospital," said Filomena Wilson, the spokesperson of a commission tasked with monitoring the outbreak.
A total of five nurses have died over the past weeks from the virus that is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids of infected people, according to Wilson.
The Marburg disease, a severe form of haemorrhagic 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 outbreak on record occurred from late 1998 to 2000 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing 123 people.
The World Health Organisation said that 75% of the victims of the disease had been children under the age of five. - AFP
- SAPA