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More Than 300 Dead in World's Worst Marburg Outbreak

Ƶ MedicalToday

GENEVA, May 20-While officials believe the world's worst outbreak of Marburg virus has been confined to a single remote area of Angola, fatalities continued to climb, with 317 dead and 337 confirmed cases.


The World Health Organization here said that the vast majority of these cases and deaths have occurred in Angola's northwest Uige province. There has been no case outside Uige in five weeks.


The WHO said that because transmission of the virus requires close personal contact with an ill or recently deceased patient, the risk to international travelers to Angola is very low. "WHO does not recommend any restrictions on travel or trade to or from Angola."


The agency reported progress in stemming exposure to Marburg at family homes and at funerals, where families, following local custom, wash and kiss the bodies of the dead, WHO said. However, public awareness of how the infection spreads has improved, the agency said, and families are bringing in ill loved ones to the hospital sooner now. Several weeks ago during the peak of the outbreak, there were reports that villagers were suspicious of foreign aid workers and were reluctant to seek treatment.


"Support from religious and community leaders has also allowed the work of mobile surveillance teams to run more smoothly," WHO said, "increasing the efficiency of case finding and contact tracing."


Once Marburg patients are identified, they are treated in the hospital with fluids and painkillers for palliation. Symptoms include headache, vomiting, bloody diarrhea and internal bleeding. Marburg can only be contracted through direct contact with body fluids. There is no cure or vaccine, and death typically occurs within a week after the onset of symptoms. If patients do survive, they are usually released from the hospital anywhere from two to three weeks.


Marburg broke out in Angola around October, but the cause was not identified until March. It is the deadliest Marburg outbreak in recorded world history. The last Marburg outbreak occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998 to 2000, where 123 people died.

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