THE death toll from the world’s worst outbreak of the Marburg virus reached 150 yesterday as panic gripped some parts of the Angolan capital Luanda.

José Van-Dunem, Angola’s Deputy Minister of Health, said: “In total we have registered 163 cases, among them 150 dead.” The first case was reported last October but the Ebola-like virus gained momentum in March. At least 20 people died at the weekend.

Among them was Maria Bonino, 51, an Italian paediatrician who had been working for a charitable group at a hospital in the province of Uige, about 180 miles north of the capital, the epicentre of the outbreak. She had travelled to Luanda for treatment.

The highly contagious Marburg virus, a severe hae-morrhagic fever, spreads on contact with body fluids, such as blood, urine, excrement, vomit and saliva. There is no known cure or medical treatment.

A combined statement by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Angolan Government, which has sealed the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, the location of the last major outbreak in 1998, when 123 people died, said that 80 per cent of the cases involved children under 15. Several other countries in the region have taken measures to try to halt the spread of the virus.

In Luanda, one of Africa’s most densely populated cities, international experts were reported to be working round the clock to complete an isolation ward to treat cases from Uige province, but the Health Ministry said that the unit would not be ready for at least five days. Volunteer workers at the Americo Boa Vida hospital, the country’s largest, have been given special “Ebola suits” to work as cleaners and washers within the isolation ward.

“We are late, we must admit, but we experienced a lot of resistance from the medical staff, the patients and the inhabitants,” Jacques Mambela- Mbela, the hospital’s director, told Agence France Presse.

Panic has been spreading among the residents of Luanda’s slums and many people stayed indoors. Reports said shops in the city had run out of household bleach and other disinfectants and that parents were keeping their children out of school.

“People don’t shake hands these days because they are so scared,” said Marco Visser, a water sanitation expert with the aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières, who is training the volunteers on how to operate in the anti-contanimation white protective suits.

Strict rules have to be followed once inside the “high risk” inner zone, which has been cordoned off with red and white plastic tape. “This includes rules like not touching walls and making sure that the protective clothing does not get torn,” Mr Visser said.

The WHO said in a statement from its Geneva headquarters that it had sent a mobile surveillance team to Uige in a response to rumours of more cases and “to conduct active searches for additional cases”. “Contact tracing has also been intensified. These activities are now supported by a mobile laboratory in Uige, which has greatly expedited diagnostic testing,” it said.

The disease is believed to have its roots in the huge and mysterious Kitum Cave on Mount Elgon, a volcanic mountain that straddles Kenya and Uganda and is home to thousands of bats. Its floor is covered in thick black and green guano slime, several yards deep, and is littered with the corpses of mummified baby elephants who fell off narrow pathways into its deep crevices.

MARBURG BUG

• The virus was first detected at a vaccine factory in Marburg, Germany, in 1967
  
• Marburg’s death rate is one in four, against one in twenty for yellow fever
  
• Marburg was the first filovirus to be discovered
  
• The last big outbreak was in 1998 in former Zaire
  
  Source: The Hot Zone, Richard Preston

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