Deadly virus spreads to Luanda

2005-03-25 08:07

Luanda - The Marburg virus, an Ebola-like virus that has killed 98 people in northern Angola, has now spread to the capital Luanda, killing two people there, officials said on Thursday.

A 15-year-old boy and an Italian paediatrician, Maria Bonino, who had both been in the northern Uige province to which the virus had previously been confined, died on Thursday from the virus in Luanda, local health officials said.

At least three other people have been diagnosed with the virus in the capital, they said.

The Marburg disease, a severe form of hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola, was first identified in 1967, affecting laboratory workers in Marburg, Germany and also in Frankfurt and Belgrade who had come into contact with infected monkeys from Uganda.

Bonino worked for the Italian medical aid group Medici con Africa Cuamm and had 11 years experience as a volunteer in Africa with the last two years as paediatrician in the provincial hospital of Uige.

Angolan health officials are battling to contain the outbreak detected in October in Uige that has claimed the lives of scores of children.

Two nurses died on Tuesday

"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, late on Wednesday.

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, she said.

The largest outbreak on record of Marburg virus 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.

Angolan health officials assisted by WHO experts and teams from Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and the US Centers for Disease Control were in Uige to try to shore up measures to stamp out the outbreak.

"The situation is bad, very bad," said health ministry spokesperson Carlos Alberto reached by AFP by phone. "There is no isolation room. We are setting it up."

Angolan health officials said this week there was no need to quarantine the region bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo, but tests were being conducted on the body of a man in Luanda who had exhibited the same symptoms.

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.

- AFP