The Congo’s top health official said on Monday he fears an outbreak of a rare haemorrhagic fever could spread from neighbouring Angola despite efforts to curtail cross-border traffic and monitor arrivals from the infected area.
Dr Damase Bozongo, Director General of Health, said he does not understand why Angolan officials do not quarantine the border area affected by the Marburg virus, which has killed more than 100 people.
”We’re worried despite the precautions we have taken,” he said in an interview.
He noted that Congo sequestered an entire district last year and closed schools and churches to contain an outbreak of Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever with many symptoms similar to the Marburg virus.
”Our experience in the fight against Ebola, which killed many people in one shot in the north of the country recently, has led us to be vigilant,” Bozongo said.
In January, he said, long before the illness was identified as Marburg, Congo sent a medical team to the border to monitor and counsel people living near the frontier between the two countries share.
Officials have been asked to check people arriving from Angola carefully and rush to the hospital any suspect cases arriving at Pointe-Noire, Congo’s petroleum port that has a well-travelled road to Angola’s affected Uige province, and daily flights from Luanda, the Angolan capital.
Villagers and townspeople have been asked to avoid funeral rites for suspected victims, Bozongo said.
Also concerned is the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, whose health minister on Monday visited Matadi port near Angola’s border, according to United Nations-sponsored Radio Okapi.
The visit came the same day that the provincial health inspector, Dr Daniel Muanda, vigorously denied rumours of Marburg cases in Matadi.
Radio Okapi said Health Minister Emile Bongeli’s visit was ”part of the fight he is leading to warn Congolese” against the virus and prevent it spreading by limiting movement across the frontier with rigorous controls at border points.
The World Health Organisation has warned that the risk of infection is increased by close contact with bodily fluids of people infected with Marburg, including during treatment or burial practices.
The last known outbreak of Marburg, which is indigenous to Africa, occurred in the Congo in 1998 and killed 123 people, which was the most on record.
Symptoms include vomiting, bloody discharge and high fever. — Sapa-AP