An outbreak of hemorrhagic fever that has claimed the lives of 96 people, many of them children, in northern Angola has been caused by the Marburg virus, Angola's deputy health minister said Tuesday.
The Marburg disease, a severe form of hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola, was first recognized in 1967 and is indigenous to Africa, affecting both humans and primates.
Angolan Deputy Health Minister Joseph Van Dunem said results from 12 samples sent to the US Centers for Disease Control had detected the virus.
"We have received the results," Van Dunem told a news conference. "We are dealing with the Marburg virus."
Van Dunem said 96 people had died out of 107 cases reported at the main provincial hospital in the northern Uige region.
Recorded cases of the disease have appeared only in a few places in Africa, the last dating back 18 years, according to medical Web sites.
The disease kills around one in every four and specific treatment for it was unknown.
The fever from the Marburg virus becomes increasing severe after an incubation period of five to 10 days, with symptoms including jaundice, inflammation of the pancreas, severe weight loss, shock, delerium, massive hemorrhagic and organ dysfunction.
The first cases of the mystery illness were detected in the northern Uige region in November but health officials last week said they did not believe that they were dealing with an outbreak of Ebola, which kills by inducing massive internal hemorrhages.
Most of those affected by the disease are children aged under five, according to the WHO.
The WHO has expressed concern over the fact that children were the main victims, saying in general hemorrhagic fevers like the one caused by the Ebola virus hit all age groups without distinction.
The Marburg disease first broke out simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany, and in Belgrade, then Yugoslavia (now Serbia) in 1967.
Some 37 people became ill and the first to be infected had beaccordingen exposed to African green monkeys or their tissue.
In Marburg, the monkeys had been imported for research and to prepare a polio vaccine, according to US-based online medical publishing company MedicineNet.com
The monkeys which caused the 1967 outbreak arrived from Uganda.
No other case was recorded until 1975, when a traveller most likely exposed in Zimbabwe became ill in Johannesburg, South Africa -- and passed it to his travelling companion and a nurse.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS