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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| Reduced Admissions in Uige Signals Spread of Marburg |
| 2005-04-11 |
| Despite incessant warnings on local radio that families of the sick should neither treat them at home nor touch corpses, Pinto's family cared for her in their house and prepared her body for burial. The virus is spread by bodily fluids, and even stray drops of spittle or beads of sweat can lead to death. "We heard on the radio that we were not supposed to do it, but out of emotion, we touched the body," said her husband Antonio, 53. "We washed her when she was alive and after she died." He also knew about the isolation unit set up at Uige's regional hospital, where Pinto had worked for 20 years. But he refused to take her there, he said, because "people believe the isolation unit is making people die." Cases like this, epidemiologists here say, show how much remains to be done in Uige before the Marburg virus is contained. But Dr. Nestor Ndayimirije, an epidemiologist and leader of the World Health Organization's efforts in Uige, said that he believes the battle is making headway. "If we compare with previous weeks, when we had 10 to 15 cases a day, now we have four to five cases a day," You can go to the link to find out what Dr Niman thinks, but I found this study about the previous largest Marburg outbreak. In summary it says infections result from an unknown biological source (possibly bats) or injections by presumably infected needles. Person to Person transmission was rare outside of a hospital setting. The current Marburg outbreak looks very different to previous outbreaks and I can see only 2 possible explanations. One is there is some local factor that is facilitating the diseases spread. The other is the disease has got a lot more infectious. If the former then the epidemiologists now on the scene should get on top of it quickly. If the latter then we have all the makings of a pandemic. |
| Posted by:phil_b |
| #4 I recall SARS in Vietnam was contained in one foreign run hospital. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-04-11 5:20:33 PM |
| #3 What will really cause a pandemic is medical practices like those in the article. The notion that 7,000 children were brought to hospitals because they slept under fans is the perfect set-up for SARS, avian flu, any respiratory illness to break out without control. Vietnam had SARS. They should have some clue about modern medical epidemiology and public health practices. |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2005-04-11 4:35:22 PM |
| #2 Meanwhile, Thousands of children hospitalized due to hot weather According to the news report 7,000 children were brought to 2 hospitals in Ho Chi Minh City in one day. This may well be bird flu. BTW, its widely believed in Asia that artificial cooling results in illness. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-04-11 4:12:03 PM |
| #1 WHO was chased out of the city for several days by mobs who believe that doctors are apreading the disease. Given the history of the region, it is NOT an unwarrented belief. I still don't see this as particularily contaigious. The WHO site has reports of an outbreak of cholera in Senegal. Reproted cases for the last three weeks were: 428, 757, 3475. Now that's an outbreak. The history of Marburg originates in Europe. It is believed that the index cases originated with exposure to monkeys, but it is evident that person to person contact resulted in the majority of the 37 cases. LINK 200 cases is still not enough of a population to draw statistical conclusions from. The life expectancy in Angola is about 40, meaning that lots and lots of children die from every imaginable disease. Marburg will take some, but I would suggest that many more have died during the same period of time from other causes. |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2005-04-11 11:53:37 AM |