MaxedOutMama
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
WHO Reports 311 Dead From Marburg
I just can't look at the figures and see that this epidemic is really slowing down. There seem to be clusters outside Uige (Uige is a town and a province). See this Recombinomics article for some confusing details about the figures. Here is the latest WHO update:
As of 17 May, the Ministry of Health in Angola has reported 337 cases of Marburg haemorrhagic fever. Of these cases, 311 were fatal. The vast majority of cases have occurred in Uige Province, where 326 cases and 300 deaths have been reported. No cases have been reported outside Uige for the past five weeks.The WHO update implies that the situation is improving, but on the 16th of May a WHO official on the ground said that they still had unattributed cases popping up:
As the death toll from the Marburg virus in Angola creeps up to the 300 mark, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has expressed concern at the current situation and is warning that the outbreak is not yet over.With a 5 to 10 day incubation period, if they were concerned on the 16th they still ought to be concerned. Quite a discrepancy, I'd say. On April 19th, just a month ago, 219 deaths had been reported, with 243 (239 + 4 new) cases. That is 94 new cases and 92 new deaths in one month, and now that they are only reporting lab-confirmed cases there is probably a little delay in that total. Confidence seems premature.
Uige-based WHO spokesperson Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told IRIN on Monday that some recently-identified cases of the killer disease had not been linked to earlier cases, raising fears that the epidemic was not yet under control since it first appeared in October 2004.
"The outbreak is not over. We've seen new cases in new municipalities that don't have obvious links to earlier cases of Marburg. We are very concerned about the situation," she said, speaking by phone from the northern Angolan province where all cases have so far originated.
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It is a filovirus like Ebola. Somewhere there is a natural host for this disease. Marburg was first detected when researchers in Europe were infected from a shipment of monkeys.
No one knows how this outbreak started, but the terrifying thing is that so far there is only one confirmed survivor out of 300 cases. This is far more fatal than Ebola.
Angola has suffered from internal strife and is terribly poor, so bad nutrition and cross-infection may be a factor. But still this is a very serious disease; they believe it began to spread by contamination at the local hospital.
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No one knows how this outbreak started, but the terrifying thing is that so far there is only one confirmed survivor out of 300 cases. This is far more fatal than Ebola.
Angola has suffered from internal strife and is terribly poor, so bad nutrition and cross-infection may be a factor. But still this is a very serious disease; they believe it began to spread by contamination at the local hospital.
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