Casualty. Italian pediatrician Maria Bonino (center), who worked in Uige province, died, probably of an infection with the Marburg virus.
as much as 117 people died in Angola during what could become the largest outbreak recorded of Marburg virus, a rare cousin of Ebola virus that also causes hemorrhagic fever, the World health organization (WHO) announced today. Also today, a Canadian team with a mobile laboratory was scheduled to arrive in the country, hoping to help quench the epidemic and learn about the mysterious disease
Marburg -. Which can cause fever, pain, diarrhea, cough, nausea and bleeding - was discovered in 1967 when a shipment of monkeys in Uganda has caused simultaneous outbreaks in the German cities of Frankfurt and Marburg and Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, sickening 31 and killing seven people. Three mini-outbreaks are known to have occurred in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, involving six. The largest outbreak to date occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 00, with 149 known cases and 123 deaths. There are no cures or vaccines against the disease.
For experts, the location of the current epidemic and its manifestation are unusual. Because Marburg had been found only in East and Central Africa, "one would think it had to be Ebola," said Thomas Geisbert of the Medical Research Institute US Army Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Maryland. According to WHO, about 75% of the victims were children until the age of 5, which is strange for a hemorrhagic fever virus, said Thomas Ksiazek of the US Centers for disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, the laboratory first identified Marburg there nearly two weeks in the samples shipped from Angola. initial sequencing, however, does not suggest that it is an unusual strain, Ksiazek said.
Although some cases were identified in the Angolan capital Luanda, the current epidemic is concentrated in the northern province of Uige, the wHO, which has a team on the ground to help local authorities. logistic obstacles in a poor country, ravaged by war like Angola can be a challenge, but stopping the epidemic should not be "particularly problematic," said Ksiazek. Marburg is not very contagious (infection requires close contact), and tracing and isolation of patients in general strictly brings the virus under control.
To facilitate the diagnosis, virologist Heinz Feldmann and Allen Grolla laboratory technician of Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory left for Angola this weekend, taking with them a mobile laboratory samples test locally. While stamping disease comes first, the team hopes to do research as well, said Feldmann's colleague Steven Jones - for example, trying to find out which immune response protects some people from the disease
[ Related Sites
WHO update on the situation in Angola
CDC page on Marburg haemorrhagic fever
0 Komentar