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Angola steps up Marburg battle
07/04/2005 10:48 - (SA)
Luanda - Angola's parliament on Wednesday passed a resolution asking the government of President Eduardo dos Santos for rapid measures to combat the outbreak of the deadly Ebola-like Marburg virus, which has now killed 159 people.
The resolution was passed by the country's 220-seat national assembly, the first parliamentary move in this poor southern African country to fight the untreatable haemorrhagic fever, as the government said it transferred more funds to fight the outbreak.
"The National Assembly of Angola recommends that the government make available more finances and materials to fight the epidemic as rapidly as possible," read the parliamentary resolution.
It also recommended "continuing co-operating with international help and ask for more should the need arise".
Angola's deputy health minister Jose Van Dunem said "the government has transferred $200 000 to the Uige provincial government," the epicentre of the outbreak.
Extra nurses flown in
"Thirty young military nurses are leaving by plane for Uige tomorrow (Thursday)," Van Dunem added.
Meanwhile Dos Santos created an emergency commission led by Angola's Interior Minister Oswaldo Serra Van Dunem in co-ordination with Defence Minister, General Kundi Pahama, to deal with the disease.
More than 30 international experts have flown into the country, the majority of them epidemiologists and specialists from the World Health Organisation, Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and the Atlanta-based Centre for Disease Controle (CDC), since the killer virus broke out in October last year.
Most of the international aid workers have been deployed to the northern town of Uige, 300km north of the seaboard capital.
They set up isolation wards there as well as at Angola's largest Americo Boa Vida hospital in Luanda, as well as analytical laboratories in the two centres, all of which became operational this week.
"Everything is in place in Uige. The last three corpses were removed from the morgue yesterday (Tuesday), which has been totally emptied and the isolation unit is ready," Alois Hug, an MSF representative said.
"The isolation ward is operational in Luanda," confirmed MSF's operational director in Angola, Erna van Goor.
Luanda's provincial health director Vita Mvemba said setting up laboratories in Angola allowed epidemiologists to identify the disease in less than two days, rather than the three weeks it took earlier as samples had to be sent to the CDC in the United States.
A severe haemorrhagic fever akin to Ebola, the Marburg virus spreads on contact with body fluids such as blood, urine, excrement, vomit and saliva.
The disease was first identified in 1967 in Germany after laboratory workers were infected by monkeys from Uganda. - AFP
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