Posted on 04/20/2005 7:59:50 PM PDT by Judith Anne
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
LUANDA, 18 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - Traditional funeral rites in Angola are putting the families of Marburg victims at risk of contracting the killer virus.
For most Angolan families, preparing the body, and kissing and embracing the deceased loved one are integral to bidding a final farewell. But the secretions from a body increase after death, making such practices highly dangerous in the case of a Marburg-related death.
"We're just telling them: 'please don't touch [suspect corpses]'; 'you cannot touch them - call in the specialised groups from the nearest health unit and let them deal with the corpse because you can get very easily contaminated if you try to touch them'," the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) communication assistant, Celso Malavoloneke, told IRIN.
The death toll from the epidemic - the world's worst to date - now stood at 235 of a total of 257 known cases.
In northern Uige province - the epicentre of the Marburg crisis - medical teams had been dispatched to people's homes when alerted to a suspected case or death.
Information was being disseminated via radio and television advertisements, traditional leaders and healers, churches and mobile teams of 'activists', telling people how to spot a suspected case of Marburg and to alert the health authorities immediately, and advising family members on how to care for the sick and protect themselves from the Ebola-like fever.
This included wearing masks and gloves, or using strong plastic bags without holes if gloves were not available.
Malavoloneke said passing on the message about how to care for the sick or bid farewell to the deceased while protecting oneself was not always easy.
"We know it's hard, and that's where the cultural challenge comes: we're all parents and it would be very hard for someone to tell you not to touch your own child if he is sick," he pointed out.
"You know that all these African societies are very much tied to ancestry, and also the way you treat deceased beloved ones; for the people here not to be able to pay their last tribute and respect to deceased beloved ones - that's particularly hard," he added.
Overcoming deep-rooted traditions remained the biggest challenge, according to health ministry officials.
Although Uige's provincial hospital now had a fully equipped and staffed isolation unit, many families were still 'hiding' the sick at home.
Medical workers said there was widespread mistrust of the isolation unit, in part because the Marburg mortality rate of more than 90 percent meant the sick did not return home once they were admitted.
World Health Organisation epidemiologist Francois Libama said he had hope that the epidemic could be stamped out, despite the rising death toll.
"If we succeed in managing all the cases and the funerals, we'll start reducing the risk of transmission," he told IRIN.
"In the case of an epidemic it's impossible to say how many days or months lie ahead, but I believe in the days to come we will have more hope," Libama added. "I believe a day will come when we will see the end of the tunnel."
Pinging everyone who's still awake to a discussion. I wouldn't have posted this, except for the last paragraph.
Precisely the problem - seeing too much of the end of the tunnel!
I should amend that to the last three paragraphs.
Precisely the problem - seeing too much of the end of the tunnel!
Severe "pucker factor" on those last three grafs. Yikes.
""In the case of an epidemic it's impossible to say how many days or months lie ahead, but I believe in the days to come we will have more hope," Libama added. "I believe a day will come when we will see the end of the tunnel."
> now stood at 235 of a total of 257 known cases
This article may be new to FR, but the data is old.
The latest "cooked" number, from Uige alone, is 277 dead.
Here's another note from Congo Kinshasa:
So far, the international efforts made to control the outbreak at least seem to have prevented the Marburg virus to cross borders into neighbouring countries. Health Minister Daniel Movando of Congo Kinshasa, which borders Angola's Uige province, yesterday said that there were no cases in is country. "Our research in two suspected cases of Marburg virus in the border town of Matadi show that no cases have been confirmed," said Dr Movando.
http://www.afrol.com/articles/16059
The article I took this from is dated April 5. Does anyone remember hearing anything more from Kinshasa?
I'm betting that the border towns have a couple of cases now...
The article was dated April 18, I know what you mean.
Very few new articles, so I'm picking from very recent ones with interest information.
Hope that's okay.
And this is from the WHO guy.
> Very few new articles, so I'm picking from very
> recent ones with interest information.
Yep. It's quiet. Too quiet.
The WHO had been putting up daily reports.
Their latest is dated the 15th.
And the day after tomorrow will be a week since new information.
Indeed.
I find this a bit spooky, and at the risk of being a conspiracy theorist, there are some other troubling aspects too. My sense has been:
1. First, they admitted they would not release new data.
2. They reclassified the data.
3. Then the post the data, but it is identical to the old.
4. Then no more data, but,
5. From a different source we learn of more deaths, and the deaths exceed the previously reported total cases.
6. Then they partition the data, reporting different numbers from different locations, but in a way that it is difficult to determine the totals.
7. They report the deaths but not the total number of cases, in sharp distinction to their reporting previously.
It is also troubling because it almost seems to me that they are reading our posts. Every time we think we are getting a handle on this, they look at EXACTLY what we had been following and change their reporting to omit it. The most recent example, from my perspective, is that they reported the deaths but NOT the total number of cases, so I cannot calculate the D_c/I_c ratio.
/conspiracy mode off
Well, if they are reading our posts, they are reading our posts.
The problem is, they cannot hide Marburg forever. It is infectious and contagious, and they do not have the medical infrastructure to contain it. And they can't shut EVERYBODY up--people talk.
Even the Chinese couldn't keep a lid on SARS. Angola is much less organized...
These people are literally whistling past the grave yard. With what they have to work with and what they're facing I really don't see how they can escape disaster unless the virus kills itself.
Someone let that 277 dead number slip. I don't think the Angolans wanted that reported.
And we all know viruses don't kill themselves...
Indeed.
And apparently, it is now just getting past their ability to hide. The recent thread listing the Uigi death toll of 277, which means the total death toll is probably around 300 and the total number of cases well above that is case and point. ALL of these numbers exceed what they had been reporting for total cases.
At this point, it may fast be becoming that the only reliable information is the death toll, because they cannot conceal it.
And with a mortality rate of 100%...it may be that your earliest predictions were correct. What a thought!
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