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 Tuesday of the Marburg illness at the Uige provincial hospital,” said Filomena Wilson, the spokesperson of a commission tasked with monitoring the outbreak.
According to Wilson, five nurses have died over the past weeks from the virus that is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids of infected people.
The Marburg disease, a severe form of haemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola, was first identified in 1967. It simultaneously affected laboratory workers in Marburg, Germany, 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.
Angolan health officials, assisted by WHO experts, teams from Doctors without Borders and the United States-based Centre for Disease Control, were in Uige to try to implement measures to stamp out the outbreak.
”The situation is bad, very bad,” said health ministry spokesman Carlos Alberto, who was 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 symptoms of the disease.
Victims of the Marburg virus initially suffer from severe diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting followed by intense chest and lung pains, coughing and a sore throat, according to the WHO.
Many cases result in serious bleeding, beginning from the fifth day that affects the gastrointestinal tract and the lungs, accompanied by a rash, sometimes involving the entire body. — Sapa-AFP