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Posted on 05/04/2005 12:42:04 AM PDT by Judith Anne
Welcome to the Marburg Surveillance Project.
This thread will be used for all of the latest Marburg Outbreak News and comments. This is the place to post all comments about the Marburg outbreak, all articles and links to articles about the Marburg outbreak.
We're going to use just one thread instead of having to go from article to article as we have in the past. We'll use this thread as long as we can.
Health Minister In Uige To Check Marburg Situation
Experimental Therapies and Vaccines for Ebola and Marburg Viruses Focus of Academy Meeting
Here's a link to a post on Curevents.com about MSF in Angola, it's VERY upsetting--MSF is leaving, apparently.
Check this out:
http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15592
Wow, what a disturbing post! Thanks for the heads up Judith Anne.
Last week, the journal Science reported the discovery of a new species of monkey in Africa. Coincidentally, the satirical magazine The Onion also wrote about the discovery of a new, rare species of monkey - and how it was so delicious that it would not last long.
Sadly, The Onion is not that far off.
Hunting for primate "bushmeat" in Africa is on the rise, and unless work is done to reduce the demand for primate meat, many species could disappear within a few short years. The latest animal to be added to the threatened list is the "kipunji," a type of mangabey recently found in the forests of Tanzania. It is the first new monkey species to be discovered in 20 years and it immediately went on the threatened list. Researchers estimate there are no more than 1,000 of the animals across its entire range, which encompasses just 120 square kilometres.
As habitat disappears and hunters use logging roads to push deeper into the remaining jungle, they are encountering more species of primate, more often. So the monkeys like the kipunji face a double threat; first from the logging that destroys their homes, then from the hunters who have easier access to remote and formerly inaccessible areas.
But the hunters themselves are also facing increased risks. A new study reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that the transfer of viruses from monkeys to humans is a relatively common event. Researchers surveyed a group of 1,000 bushmeat hunters in Cameroon and found two viruses never before seen in humans. The researchers suspect that the viruses, called HTLV-3 and HTLV-4, jumped to people from primates. Last year, the same team discovered that simian foamy virus had made a similar leap.
While some of these viruses are relatively benign, others that have migrated from primates to humans have proven to be anything but. For example, Ebola, a deadly type of hemorrhagic fever, is believed to have originated in primates and now haunts several regions in Africa. Last week, authorities in the Congo quarantined two districts and confined thousands of residents to their homes to prevent an outbreak of Ebola from spreading.
And then there is HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS. Its viral ancestor is believed to have originated in monkeys before leaping to chimpanzees and then finally migrating to humans - again thanks to the bushmeat trade. Since then, it has spread around the world, killing more than 20 million people.
Hunting primates may certainly seem distasteful to many people - especially those in the developed world. After all, these creatures do share up to 99.4 per cent of our DNA. But the fact is, bushmeat represents a cheap source of protein for an impoverished people. If primates are what is available, then that's what people will hunt.
And while the developed world may disdain hunting for primates, wealthy countries have been implicated in a major expansion of the bushmeat trade. European fishing fleets have been hammering fish stocks along the West Coast of Africa for years, supported by $350 million annually in subsidies. Studies have found that, as fish stocks have disappeared, locals have increasingly turned to bushmeat as a source of protein. The result has been a massive reduction in the number of large mammals - especially primates - in the area's nature reserves.
Bushmeat hunting may seem like a distant problem, but as the spread of HIV has shown, it can affect us all. If we want to avoid the transfer of new diseases from primates to people and protect our closest cousins, we have to work much
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/Suzuki/2005/05/25/1055321.html
Knew about Negenge with the 23 May www.msf.fr post, didn't know about Uige/Songo. That is terrible news.
OMG...what is going on?
According to www.msf.fr website (via google translate) they're getting attacked by local populace.
I thought that MSF was always better received than WHO...shame on me for getting that wrong...
Translation by Babel Fish:
Portugal anticipates measured against hemorrhagic fever
- 25-Mar-2005 - 12:56
The Portuguese who have been, in last the 21 days, the Angolan province of Uíge, are to be informed of occasion it of hemorrhagic fever that already killed a hundred of people. Although it does not have any in case that registado in Portugal, the health authorities already had taken some "measures of anticipation", as to inform the passengers who travel for Angola of the forms of propagation and symptoms of the illness.
Francisco George, assistant director-generality of Health, guaranteed to the JN not to have information of any Portuguese infectado with the virus of Marburg and that the probabilities of I occasion it not to confine itself to the Uíge "are very reduced", a time that the transmission of the virus occurs for "direct contact of proximity" and "is not easy long-distance". The last official rocking, known anteontem, related to 98 deaths in the Uíge and five cases, two of the which mortals, in the Luanda capital.
It enters the measures of anticipation, the responsible one of Direcção-Geral de Saúde (DGS) related that a "circuit of communication" with the authorities of health of Angola is established, to bring up to date the referring data to the illness and to inform the passengers who if dislocate from airplane between Angola and Portugal.
"an information mechanism was created to advise the passengers who have been in the Uíge in last the 21 days and that they can have the risk of adoecer", declared, adding to be unaware of how many Portuguese they had been in the Uíge in the last weeks. Francisco George also asseverou that he has prepared hospitals to treat this type of cases, appointedly, the Curry Cabral.
The General Consulate in Luanda is to recommend to the Portuguese who do not dislocate themselves to the Uíge, suggesting to that they are there that they leave for Luanda. The Portuguese companies who work in the province already had removed its workers for the Angolan capital, the same having occurred with six Lay elements of the organization for the Development.
Portugal is to give support, "since the first day of the problem", through the sending of material of individual protecção for doctors, nurses and technician of health. To support the sanitary authorities of the Uíge, the Embassy of Portugal in Luanda already has in the Angolan capital as a shipment of dismissable material of medical use, that goes to deliver to the Health department soon that it is desalfandegado. However, the European Commission disponibilizou 500 a thousand euros to fight "the serious epidemic" of hemorrhagic fever.
The province of the Uíge, in the North of Angola, is to be afectada by a hemorrhagic fever originated by the virus of Marburg, of the same family of the Ébola, that already took the Angolan Government and the World-wide Organization of Saúde (OMS) to declare the existence of an epidemic of the illness in Angola. The virus, that has as main reservoir the green monkey, transmits itself for contact with corporal fluids (as the sweat, the saliva or sémen) of infectados individuals.
Source: JN/Lusa
http://www.noticiaslusofonas.com/view.php?load=arcview&article=9462&catogory=news
Thanks for keeping this info coming. While I have nothing to add, I check in from time to time and try to catch-up.
There are many FReepers doing the work of informing us all. I am so grateful for everyone who takes the time to link or post an article, who volunteers an opinion, who reads the thread.
I don't know exactly how, but I am convinced we're making a contribution. As someone above said, we're either paranoid or prescient.
Come to think of it, no reason we couldn't be both. ;-D
This is rather disturbing :-(...incidents of violence, even large scale unrest is not an unforseeable development in an escalating epidemic crisis but MSF are NOT a cowardly bunch so if they are pulling out it must be getting bad indeed...or there may be more to this than we know?
Clearing out ahead of 'something' happening perhaps?
Any 'interesting' troop movements in Angola lately?
You are certainly asking some excellent questions.
Those people are all being tested for Marburg, right? That's why the testers are all wearing biohazard suits...
"Dr. Mark Katz of the World Health Organization examines an Angolan suspected of having the Marburg virus."
The word "suspected" is what concerns me....
Ahh, sorry. Didn't see your post before.
They ARE out to get me. For being so far ahead of everyone else.
Now that you've posted, they know you know. So they'll be out to get you to...
Yeah, that's the part that scared me, too. In the small picture on the web site, you see the person being tested and a couple of other people behind her. But when I enlarged the picture to full size, you can see a LINE of people waiting to be tested...all of whom are apparently suspected of being infected.
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