Angola says Marburg outbreak coming under control

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Angolan officials believe the world’s worst Marburg virus epidemic is coming under control in the north of the country where the war-shattered infrastructure has limited the spread of the virus.

More than 200 people have been killed in the outbreak of the Ebola-like disease, which causes death through massive bleeding.

But international health workers tackling the epidemic in Uige province have come up against local mistrust with some people accusing them of spreading the disease.

Deputy Health Minister Jose Van Dunem said government and international health workers were turning to traditional healers and leaders to talk to the population.

“We already have it under control,” he told Reuters in an interview in the capital Luanda late Sunday.

“There have been no new cases in other provinces. We know exactly how to cut the epidemiological chain of transmission.”

International health workers in Uige have not yet confirmed the outbreak is under control.

Marburg, which is transmitted through bodily fluids such as sweat, blood and saliva, has killed 235 people and infected 22 more, the health ministry said late Sunday.

Almost all the cases have occurred in Uige province, northeast of Luanda.

A handful of cases have been reported elsewhere in the country, but all among people who had recently visited Uige, the health ministry said.

Nearly three decades of civil war has wrecked the oil producing country’s transport and health systems.

Van Dumen said 70 percent of hospitals and clinics were destroyed before the conflict ended in 2002. This has made it harder to tackle the disease.

But Van Dumen said poor roads between Uige and the rest of the country had also slowed the spread of the outbreak.

Residents say the main road out of the city is often all but impassable with flooding, potholes, and land mines still common along the route.

LOST CONFIDENCE

Health workers from the United Nations and Medecins Sans Frontieres are working with Angolan civilian and military staff to control the disease, but some UN World Health Organization (WHO) staff have been attacked by locals.

“Early in the outbreak some of the health professionals died and some of the people have lost confidence in them,” Van Dunem said.

Traditional healers and leaders could help boost trust by backing disease prevention messages, he said.

Victims are most contagious in the final stages of the disease.

Van Dunem said the virus could be defeated if contact with the sick and dead was reduced.

Many Angolans kiss and clean the body of dead relatives before burial, and this had to be stopped, he said.

So far, the outbreak has had little impact on foreign companies operating in Angola - Africa’s second largest oil producer after Nigeria—but expatriate workers say they are worried even though the disease remains outside the capital.

“With this, if you shake the wrong person’s hand you’re dead,” one Scottish oil worker said.

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