Angolans die from Ebola-like bug Update: WHO: No end in sight Death Toll 210

In the last five months almost 100 Angolans have died from an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever. Similar in symptoms to its more famous cousin Ebola, this outbreak is being blamed on the Marburg virus. The symptoms include: vomiting, bloody discharge and fever. The Marburg virus was first isolated in 1967 and effects primates as well.

Update: April 13th, 2005: WHO: No end in sight

UIGE, Angola (AFP) - There is no end in sight to the outbreak of the Marburg virus in Angola, a top expert from the World Health Organisation said, citing "massive problems" in mobilising Angolans to fight the Ebola-like bug in this northern city.

After four weeks, this epidemic is still peaking," said Pierre Formenty, the WHO's top specialist on new and dangerous diseases.

"It has not been stopped, because we have massive problems in mobilising the community against it," he told AFP as the death toll from the deadly haemorrhagic fever hit 210.
No End In Sight

Update: April 9th, 2005.N.: Angola Virus Epidemic Not Controlled

GENEVA - Medical experts are having some success countering an outbreak of a deadly Ebola-like virus in Angola, but it has yet to be brought fully under control, the U.N. health agency said Friday.

The rare Marburg virus has killed 174 people out of a total 200 cases, said Dr. Mike Ryan, director of alert and response operations for the World Health Organization.

"The situation right now in Angola is not under control yet," Ryan told reporters in Geneva. "This is still a crisis, and a health crisis on a national level."
Not Under Control

LUANDA, Angola (AFP) - The death toll in an outbreak of the Ebola like Marburg virus in Angola rose to 115, including many children and two Italian and Vietnamese doctors, health officials said, as the disease spread to the capital Luanda.

Three-quarters of the deaths were children under the age of five, according to the UN's World Health Organization (WHO).

"Until today, the number of sick in hospital in Uige is 118 of whom 113 are dead in the wake of the Marburg epidemic," Carlos Alberto, a health ministry spokesman told AFP from Uige, about 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of Luanda.
Death Toll Increases

Deadly Ebola-like virus spreads to Angolan capital

LUANDA (AFP) - The Marburg virus, an Ebola (news - web sites)-like virus that has killed 98 people in northern Angola, has now spread to the capital Luanda, killing two people there, officials said.

A 15-year-old boy and an Italian paediatrician, Maria Bonino, who had both been in the northern Uige province to which the virus had previously been confined, died Thursday from the virus in Luanda, local health officials said.
Marburg Virus

Angola's infrastructure is essentially destroyed and that makes it very hard to respond to any threat such as this. One saving grace of this family of disease is its lethality. It kills quickly thus limiting its spread. Right now its confined to fluid transmission, but who is not to say it wont mutate into a airborne strain? Given its lethality, this could be a huge threat tot he world.

[edit on 3/25/05 by FredT]


[edit on 4/9/05 by FredT]

[edit on 4/13/05 by FredT]

That is a very scary situation. Is that possible to mutate into an airborne virus? Also what did you mean when you said primates?

I've read somewhere that the mucus membranes / intestines of young children are thinner than of adults and therefor are more affected by haemoraage causing diseases

I wonder if EPO and bloodthicking agents could be beneficial for treatment ?


[edit on 24-3-2005 by Silenus]

I have always wondered just how many virus's the primate family has given us? If this virus is related to the "Ebola" virus that presents a very scary situation for the people in the affected region. csulli456 I guess it could mutate given the proper food and fuel and with that it is entirely possible that it can become airborne. As with any virus given the right mixture of ingredients it needs to survive, anything is possible.

Marburg is a filovirus which means threadlike which lends it's similarity to Ebola. Ebola is a newer virus than Marburg which was discovered in a Marburg Germany lab I believe.
Eventually the person bleeds out internally and externally and coagulates wouldn't do much in the way to prevent the bleed out because it like Ebola liquifies internal organs. Although treatments have included a transfusion of fresh plasma to replace blood proteins
Not a pretty picture.
I think what you are refering to Silenus is the cribiform plate in the nasal cavity. The plate fully forms when we reach late adolencence/adulthood but is soft and pliable in children which leaves them more susceptable for pathogens because the plate doesn't block the viruses as well as they would in adults.

Originally posted by FLYIN HIGH
I have always wondered just how many virus's the primate family has given us?

The biggest contributor to the spread of diseases is the primate called "Homo Sapiens". It is capable of spreading an infection worldwide in days whereas all other primates confine their spread to a very local area. Not even birds can spread a virus as quickly as homo sapiens.

Originally posted by FLYIN HIGH
I have always wondered just how many virus's the primate family has given us? If this virus is related to the "Ebola" virus that presents a very scary situation for the people in the affected region. csulli456 I guess it could mutate given the proper food and fuel and with that it is entirely possible that it can become airborne. As with any virus given the right mixture of ingredients it needs to survive, anything is possible.

Since you are a primate, I'm not sure I understand your question. You carry around most of the viruses that our ancestral primate lineages have encountered. The human genome is riddled with the degenerate sequences of our previous viral scourges. Is your question how many viruses have recently jumped from non-human primates to humans in recent years? A few strains of filo viruses, HIV, monkeypox...and handful. It would probably help a lot if people stopped eating monkey and apes. Butchering primates for food is a good way to introduce these things into human populations.

Viruses don't have "food and fuel" per se, and their mutation rate is generally independent of nutrient resources (especially given that they don't "feed" on things so much as instruct cells to build more copies of themselves). Mutation rate of viruses is often dependent on the genome--e.g. is it RNA, DNA, double-stranded, single-stranded, etc. RNA viruses generally have the highest mutation rates. Marburg is an RNA virus, so I'm guessing it has a high mutation rate. However, some recent research has suggested that clinical pathology is independent of mutation rate. That is high mutation rate doesn't seem to have any effect on the nature of the pathogenesis of the disease. A higher and lower mutation rate strain can have the same effect.

As for going airborne, we already know that filoviruses are transmitted in aerosols. The Ebola outbreak at a primate facility in the US was airborne (didn't infect humans though). Some human infecting strains are "airborne" though. To the best of my knowledge this is simply because your lungs fill with blood containing virus particles and as you hack and cough, you're spreading droplets of blood, phlegm and whatnot containing potentially infectious viruses. Since we don't know much about the natural ecology of filoviruses, it is hard to say if this is major natural route of transmission. However, given that most diseases that are naturally spread via aerosols seem to be correlated with high population densities (think the flu and the cold), and given that most primates have low densities, it is unlikely that this is the major mode of transmission. Since these outbreaks typically burn out rapidly, and given that a lot of major mutations are necessary in order to adapt something to aerosol spread, we're unlikely to see a super airborne Filovirus. Generally if your organs are being liquified you don't feel like walking around--hence you're not going to cough on a lot of people. Influenza makes you feel just crappy enough that you can go about and do your business and cough on everyone you know while doing it. I'm guessing to adapt to aerosol transmission filoviruses would have to loose the internal bleeding/organ destruction business first.

isn't the UN supposed to be "monitoring" and "assisting" this region?

Is the WHO already deployed yet?

The BBC is now reporting that the disease is now in the Angolan Capital. This is breaking and no details are available yet

Deadly Ebola-like virus spreads to Angolan capital

LUANDA (AFP) - The Marburg virus, an Ebola (news - web sites)-like virus that has killed 98 people in northern Angola, has now spread to the capital Luanda, killing two people there, officials said.

A 15-year-old boy and an Italian paediatrician, Maria Bonino, who had both been in the northern Uige province to which the virus had previously been confined, died Thursday from the virus in Luanda, local health officials said.
Marburg Virus

LUANDA, Angola (AFP) - The death toll in an outbreak of the Ebola like Marburg virus in Angola rose to 115, including many children and two Italian and Vietnamese doctors, health officials said, as the disease spread to the capital Luanda.

Three-quarters of the deaths were children under the age of five, according to the UN's World Health Organization (WHO).

"Until today, the number of sick in hospital in Uige is 118 of whom 113 are dead in the wake of the Marburg epidemic," Carlos Alberto, a health ministry spokesman told AFP from Uige, about 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of Luanda.
Death Toll Increases

People have been warned against travel to Angola after the death toll from the Ebola-like Marburg bug rose to 121.

The virus, which first broke out in the northern Uige province last October and causes fever, vomiting and bleeding, has now spread to the capital Luanda.
Death Toll Increases

The death toll in Angola from an outbreak of the rare Marburg virus has risen sharply to 146 people, the country's health ministry has said.
Twenty of the deaths have been reported since Thursday.

The outbreak, which began last October in Uige province, is the most serious ever recorded of the virus, a fast-spreading haemorrhagic fever.
Marburg Virus

An Italian Doctor is among the dead

is this a new Biological Weapon made out to look like Ebola Bug ??

Originally posted by Southern Hemisphere
is this a new Biological Weapon made out to look like Ebola Bug ??

No, this variant was first isolated in 1967 or so. If you are going to go there, why have such a limited strike. However the toll as evidenced by the updates means this type may not die out as quickly as an Ebola outbreak and the toll may keep going up here.

Note: that of the 200 infected, 174 have dies, thats almost a 75% mortality rate.

GENEVA - Medical experts are having some success countering an outbreak of a deadly Ebola-like virus in Angola, but it has yet to be brought fully under control, the U.N. health agency said Friday.

The rare Marburg virus has killed 174 people out of a total 200 cases, said Dr. Mike Ryan, director of alert and response operations for the World Health Organization.

"The situation right now in Angola is not under control yet," Ryan told reporters in Geneva. "This is still a crisis, and a health crisis on a national level."
Not Under Control

UIGE, Angola (AFP) - There is no end in sight to the outbreak of the Marburg virus in Angola, a top expert from the World Health Organisation said, citing "massive problems" in mobilising Angolans to fight the Ebola-like bug in this northern city.

After four weeks, this epidemic is still peaking," said Pierre Formenty, the WHO's top specialist on new and dangerous diseases.

"It has not been stopped, because we have massive problems in mobilising the community against it," he told AFP as the death toll from the deadly haemorrhagic fever hit 210.
No End In Sight

I wonder how they can be so sure it will stay contained within Angola?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- An outbreak of deadly Marburg virus in Angola is probably not a global threat but international experts are working to bring it under control, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

The hemorrhagic fever, a relative of the Ebola virus, has killed some 200 people and terrified people in Uige province, northeast of Angola's capital Luanda.

Not a Global Threat

April 22, 2005
Marburg outbreak contained.

The outbreak of the Ebola-like Marburg virus that has claimed 244 lives in Angola has been confined to the province of Uige, as no new cases had been detected outside the northern region, the country's health ministry says.

"We have circumscribed the epidemic to the province of Uige," Deputy Health Minister Jose Van Dunem said today, adding that four provinces and the capital Luanda had not recently reported any new cases.
"Kwanza Norte, Kwanza Sul, Zaire, Cabinda and Luanda have not reported any new cases of Marburg."

Of 266 cases of the virus, 244 people have died - with the vast bulk of those from the northern province of Uige, where 228 patients have succumbed to the virus in the worst outbreak ever of the disease. Source

and this is an interesting clinical link, April 22, 2005. (2 pages)
Canadian special pathogens team sees progress in Angola's Marburg outbreak

When hemorrhagic fevers expert Dr. Heinz Feldmann started his career 20 years ago, he and fellow students of the rare pathogens that cause Marburg fever and Ebola toiled in obscurity, often presenting papers at scientific meetings to audiences of two.

No longer. The dramatic nature of outbreaks and concerns about the bioterrorism potential of the lethal viruses make them front page news. Source

Hopefully, this outbreak is truely contained.

The symptoms include: vomiting, bloody discharge and fever.

What a way to go... Sounds just like Ebola... Yikes!