Mysterious Haemorhagic Fever or Ebola Revisited?

Angola is now the latest location of an outbreak of a Haemorhagic Fever. Supposedly not Ebola, this fever has similar symptoms, but leaves its victims able to recover if they have prompt treatment. It's also spread via touching corpses and eating infected meat - just as Ebola is.

sg.news.yahoo.com...
An outbreak of an unidentified haemorrhagic fever has claimed the lives of 87 people in northern Angola over the past four months.

The Angolan health ministry is awaiting the results of samples sent to Senegal and the United States to identify the strain of the fever, health ministry spokesman Carlos Alberto said on Friday.

"Seventy-six people died between November last year and February and 11 others died between then and March 15 ... from a strain of haemorrhagic fever that we have not yet identified," Alberto told AFP.

What's most interesting with this new outbreak is that it hits children as it's "main victims" while often leaving their parents healthy. Ebola kills everyone. Is this perhaps a new strain that preys on those with weakened or young immune systems? Different disease entirely?

More info: www.cnn.com...

The good news is: there may be a lower number of deaths from this disease than previously reported.

The bad news? It's killing mainly kids, and is still unidentified.

SARS was the most recent outbreak of an unidentified disease in 2003, and now this mystery killer. We'll probably be seeing more and more mysterious disease killers in the next few years pop up in parts of the world.

Good post.

I was reading about this last night and debated posting it, it's an interesting development. The fact that it targets kids could be a result of them not having as many developed immunities, or it could have to do with them lacking a concentration of a certain mineral or vitamin that adults have. The diet might be the issue. It could also be their play time, often in undeveloped nations, children play in unsanitary rivers and lakes, host to all sorts of nasty bacteria and parasites.

Let's hope it doesn't spread, the symptoms are unpleasant to say the least.

Actually, Ebola mainly hits adults, and not children.

But it is very interesting.. I expect this to be a new string of Ebola, and not something totally unrelated.

Update: It's the Marburg virus, and has now killed 96 people...

news.bbc.co.uk...

Blood was sent to the US for analysis, according to the above atricle, and the Marburg virus was found.