Angola’s Marburg death toll climbs

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Angola’s Marburg epidemic has claimed 14 more lives, taking the death toll in the worst recorded outbreak of the virus to 146, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.

While the outbreak has been confined to the northern province of Uige, residents in the capital Luanda were taking no chances as they scrambled for supplies to disinfect their homes, emptying store shelves of household bleach.

“They’ve literally bought us out. We don’t have a single bottle of bleach left,” apologised one sales assistant in a small Portuguese-run grocery shop in the teeming city centre.

"People are really scared about catching this horrible disease so they’re trying to disinfect everything,” said another shop worker in a large supermarket.

Many of the measures the government has promoted to avoid catching the rare hemorrhagic fever involve respecting basic rules of hygiene.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday Angola’s outbreak was the deadliest ever from the disease, which is related to Ebola.

The previous record was 123 deaths among 149 cases during an epidemic from late 1998-2000 in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Most of the victims were gold miners.

The WHO has deployed 20 experts to help combat the viral fever, characterised by headaches, nausea, vomiting and bloody diarrhoea. It is spread through close contact with bodily fluids including saliva and perspiration.

The victims have included an Italian doctor who was treating people with the virus. 

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