Reuters reports that Angolan officials believe the Marburg outbreak is coming under control in the north of the country:
Deputy Health Minister Jose Van Dunem said government and international health workers were turning to traditional healers and leaders to talk to the population.
“We already have it under control,” he told Reuters in an interview in the capital Luanda late Sunday.
“There have been no new cases in other provinces. We know exactly how to cut the epidemiological chain of transmission.”
From California Yankee.
Reuters reports that with the death toll reaching 126 the outbreak of the Marburg virus in Angola has become the world’s worst.
With 132 cases of the haemorrhagic fever recorded the mortality rate in the Angolan Outbreak is much worse than the 23 to 25 percent the CDC says is the usual mortality rate from Marburg. The fact that Angola suffered 27 years of civil war, leaving Angola’s health system in “tatters,” is the only explanation offered for the higher mortality rate.
From California Yankee.
Austrailia’s Special Broadcasting Service reports that the Angolan outbreak of the Marburg virus is spreading:
Angolan health officials have appealed for outside help to prevent the spread of a lethal virus as the death toll from the Ebola-like Marburg disease rose to 120.
The country’s deputy health minister, Jose Van-Dumen, said the situation was critical after returning from a two-day field visit to the province of Uige in northern Angola.
A health ministry official said a pregnant woman died yesterday of the Marburg virus in a hospital in Cabinda in the north.
It was the first fatality outside the capital, Luanda and the province of Uige.
From California Yankee.