Tweet
Marburg Disease Contained, Says World Health Body
New Vision (Kampala)
NEWS
19 August 2007
Posted to the web 19 August 2007
By Reuben Olita, Steven Candia and Agencies
Kampala
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) experts have declared that Uganda has contained an outbreak of the Marburg fever.
The disease hit gold miners in the western parts of the country recently.
Pierre Formenty, a WHO expert, said investigators collected hundreds of bats from the mine, which they suspect may be a reservoir of the disease.
"The outbreak is contained. We need to follow up the survivors and their contacts who need to have safe sex in the next three months," he told journalists by phone from a laboratory near Kitaka mine in Kamwenge district, where the virus was reported to have originated.
A team of eight international experts has gathered there to research on the virus.
Formenty said surveillance of the miners and the locals would continue to the end of August.
A miner died on July 14 and another was last week confirmed to have survived the rare viral haemorrhagic disease closely related to the Ebola virus.
According to WHO, a major outbreak of Marburg occurred among gold miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2000, causing 128 deaths of the 154 cases reported.
Another outbreak in Angola in 2004 and 2005 killed 150 people of the 163 cases reported.
The local papers in Tanzania, The Guardian and Tanzania Daily, on Friday quoted government officials in the Kagera, Mara and Mwanza regions as saying precautions had been taken against the spread of the fever in the country.
Herbert Bhwana, the Mwanza regional medical officer, said: "We have conducted sensitisation seminars for medical practitioners in Geita, Magu and Ukerewe districts."
There is no vaccine or treatment for the fatal disease which causes severe headache, a fever and bleeding.
An outbreak is contained if 21 days pass without any contacts developing symptoms.
New Vision (Kampala)
NEWS
19 August 2007
Posted to the web 19 August 2007
By Reuben Olita, Steven Candia and Agencies
Kampala
THE World Health Organisation (WHO) experts have declared that Uganda has contained an outbreak of the Marburg fever.
The disease hit gold miners in the western parts of the country recently.
Pierre Formenty, a WHO expert, said investigators collected hundreds of bats from the mine, which they suspect may be a reservoir of the disease.
"The outbreak is contained. We need to follow up the survivors and their contacts who need to have safe sex in the next three months," he told journalists by phone from a laboratory near Kitaka mine in Kamwenge district, where the virus was reported to have originated.
A team of eight international experts has gathered there to research on the virus.
Formenty said surveillance of the miners and the locals would continue to the end of August.
A miner died on July 14 and another was last week confirmed to have survived the rare viral haemorrhagic disease closely related to the Ebola virus.
According to WHO, a major outbreak of Marburg occurred among gold miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2000, causing 128 deaths of the 154 cases reported.
Another outbreak in Angola in 2004 and 2005 killed 150 people of the 163 cases reported.
The local papers in Tanzania, The Guardian and Tanzania Daily, on Friday quoted government officials in the Kagera, Mara and Mwanza regions as saying precautions had been taken against the spread of the fever in the country.
Herbert Bhwana, the Mwanza regional medical officer, said: "We have conducted sensitisation seminars for medical practitioners in Geita, Magu and Ukerewe districts."
There is no vaccine or treatment for the fatal disease which causes severe headache, a fever and bleeding.
An outbreak is contained if 21 days pass without any contacts developing symptoms.
Comment