Carlos Alberto, a spokesman for the Angolan health ministry, says the death toll in the Marburg hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Angola has now risen to 122, just one fewer than in the largest previous outbreak of the disease, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 200 and killed 123 of 149 people infected.
This latest report does not give the total number of cases in the outbreak, which began last October. A Mar 23 report from the
Carlos Alberto, a spokesman for the Angolan health ministry, says the death toll in the Marburg hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Angola has now risen to 122, just one fewer than in the largest previous outbreak of the disease, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 200 and killed 123 of 149 people infected.
said 95 of 102 patients had died, for a case-fatality rate of 93% at that point.
75% of those infected in Angola have been children under 5 years old, and most of the cases have occurred in the north-eastern province of Uige. Seven have occurred in the capital, Luanda, on the Atlantic coast, and two of the seven - an Italian doctor and a 15-year-old boy, both of whom had been to Uige - have died.
The Italian doctor identified as Maria Bonino, worked in Africa for the United Nations for 11 years. A Vietnamese doctor has also died in the outbreak, but has not been identified.
The disease has been spreading from children to parents and vice-versa and many victims died because they first consulted traditional healers, called Kimbandeiros, and didn't go to a hospital until it was too late Alberto said.
A travel clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, is warning travellers to stay away from Angola for at least a week and a clinic spokesman, Andrew Jamieson, said many people were considering evacuating their families from Angola.