Aaron Nicodemus
Reports that an Ebola-like virus was brought home by Zimbabwean soldiers are false, say the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Zimbabwe health officials.
Dr Moudi Abdou, WHO representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, says the virus has been contained within the Congo, and that no new cases have appeared since April 23, when a doctor who was treating patients was infected.
The outbreak has infected 90 people and killed 61. Most of the victims were informal gold miners living in extremely poor conditions.
”There are no cases in Zimbabwe,” Moudi said this week. ”We believe the epidemic is at its end.”
Last week it was reported that Zimbabwean soldiers returning from the war in the Congo had contracted the Marburg virus, which has the same symptoms as Ebola: fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, and heavy internal and external bleeding. The virus is thought to be spread by small animals.
The reports met with some scepticism from the medical community because Zimbabwean soldiers were nowhere near the outbreak of the virus, which was centred on the Ituti district in the Congo’s north-east corner. That section of the country is controlled by rebel forces, including soldiers from Uganda.
The outbreak in the Congo has almost become an annual event, according to Dr Andrew Jamieson, medical director of Medinfo. The cause of the regular outbreaks, labelled ”the Durba syndrome” after a town in the Ituti district that has been repeatedly hard-hit, is still a mystery to health officials.
Jamieson says a 1996 study by Russian researcher ES Belanov, published in a Russian medical journal, found that the Marburg virus can survive on contaminated surfaces for up to five days. This is worrisome, Jamieson says, because the conflict in the Congo brings soldiers from all over Africa into the infected area and could lead to the virus’s spread.
”It is thought that HIV may have had its origin in this region and spread along communication routes into neighbouring countries,” Jamieson said. ”It is not impossible that other diseases may follow the same route.”
Marburg virus was first recognised in 1967, when outbreaks of haemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).
The first people infected had been exposed to African green monkeys or their tissues. In Marburg, the monkeys had been imported for research and to prepare a polio vaccine.
Recorded cases of the disease are rare, and have appeared in only a few locations. There is no known cure for the Marburg virus. In the past, it has killed about 25% of those infected, as opposed to Ebola, which has a 75% death rate. In the latest outbreak in the Congo, however, the death rate for those infected is approaching 80%.