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. All the deaths occurred at the main provincial hospital of Uige town in northern Angola. The spokesman however denied that the fatalities were due to Ebola fever. "Ebola is highly contagious. But with this haemorrhagic fever there have been cases where children have died but their mothers have survived without displaying the slightest signs of the disease," said Alberto. Ebola kills by inducing massive internal haemorrhages. He underlined that the outbreak was confined to the town of Uige and surrounding areas. so far ....
Most of those affected by the disease are children aged under five, the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) said from Geneva, which gave a figure of 39 dead since the start of this year.
so the question is, will this spread to adults, perhaps starting with adults who have compromised immune systems (of which there are millions in Afric)
WHO expressed concern over the fact that children were the main victims, saying in general haemorrhagic fevers like the one caused by the Ebola virus hit all age groups without distinction, according to WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib. "We're perplexed. We don't know if it's Ebola fever or something else," she said.
There is no vaccine or cure for the highly contagious Ebola, which has since 2001 resurfaced to claim dozens of lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola's northern neighbour, as well as the Congo Republic, Gabon and Sudan. Patients can, however, recover if put in quarantine and given swift treatment for the symptoms, including high fever, diarrhoea and bleeding from the nose and gums. Ebola kills by inducing massive internal haemorrhages. The disease can be transmitted by body fluids, touching the corpses of victims without precautions and is considered to be caused at least in part by the eating of the flesh of infected animals.