Fearful of the Marburg virus that has killed 210 people, inhabitants of the northern Angolan city of Uige have given up their traditional greeting of wrapping friends and acquaintances in a hug. Locals welcomed a reporter on Thursday by touching right legs covered by trousers — a new custom devised to help check the spread of the virus.
Three musicians are recording a song about the killer Marburg virus in Angola — just one example of actions taken by ordinary citizens who want to stamp out the virus now claiming up to 10 lives a day. ”Marburg, leave our people in peace. We are going to kick you out of this country,” goes the song in Portuguese.
Health experts fighting the killer Marburg virus in northern Angola said on Monday they were facing denial from families who are refusing to send their sick to hospitals or are taking them out of the city, worsening the risk of contamination. Isolation of victims is the only way to slow the spread of the disease, for which there are no drugs or vaccine.
Fear stalked the streets on Saturday in the squalid northern Angolan town of Uige, devastated by years of civil war and now the epicentre of an outbreak of the killer Marburg virus, which has claimed 180 lives so far. In Uige province alone, 160 people have been killed by the virus, which has claimed 98% of those infected in the outbreak.
Another young woman died on Sunday of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in Angola, officials said, as the death toll in the deadly outbreak rose to almost equal the most serious outbreak ever recorded. About 121 people died since the haemorrhagic virus first broke out in the northern town of Uige in October.
Four people died on Saturday from an outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus in the provincial hospital of Uige in northern Angola, bringing the total nation-wide death toll to 119 in less than six months. Until now the most serious outbreak of the disease was in the DRC where 123 people died between 1998-2000.