ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending May 1st, 2005

Traditional healers here say their grandmothers knew of a bleeding disease similar to the current epidemic of hemorrhagic fever that has killed 244 of the 266 people who have contracted it. The grandmothers even had a treatment for the sickness, the healers told Dr. Boris I. Pavlin of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the remedy has been lost. The old disease was called kifumbe, the word in the Kikongo language for murder.

But kifumbe did not seem to be contagious. And so, Dr. Pavlin said, though he did not doubt it was real, it was probably not the same as the disease in Ua­ge today. The current disease, caused by the Marburg virus, is contagious. Like the Ebola virus, to which it is closely related, it is spread by bodily fluids like blood, vomit and saliva.

No one can say for sure what kifumbe (pronounced key-FOOM-bay) was, and in some ways the Marburg virus is almost as mysterious. More than a month has passed since it was identified as the cause of the deadly outbreak here - the largest Marburg epidemic on record - but some of the most basic questions about the epidemic have yet to be answered. How and when did this rare virus get here? Why have so many victims been children? And how could so many have become infected before the disease was recognized?

The high death rate, over 90 percent, is also puzzling, but it is too soon to tell whether the rate is really that high. In past outbreaks, mortality has been lower. In Ua­ge, milder cases may be going unrecognized.

"It is easier to count the dead people," said Dr. Pierre Rollin, a physician in the special pathogens branch of the C.D.C. "The numbers in the beginning don't mean anything."

Viral hemorrhagic fevers, a handful of diseases found only in Africa and South America, are among the most frightening of all illnesses. Ebola and Marburg, limited to Africa, are the only members of a family known as filoviruses...

Nguyen Sy Tuan can barely talk. His wasted frame is tucked beneath a thin white sheet on the hospital cot. His cheeks are sunken and his bulging eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. But the young man has begun to eat rice again and can finally breathe without a mechanical ventilator, a dramatic turnaround for a bird flu patient whose doctors had assumed would die.

More than a year after avian influenza emerged in East Asia, killing more than two-thirds of the people with confirmed cases, Vietnamese doctors are reporting that the mortality rate in their country has dropped substantially.

But while this is good news for survivors, it could mean the outbreak of bird flu in Southeast Asia is taking an ominous turn. If a disease quickly kills almost everyone it infects, it has little chance of spreading very far, according to international health experts. The less lethal bird flu becomes, they say, the more likely it is to...

A federal judge ordered the Justice Department yesterday to begin providing testimony to attorneys for Steven J. Hatfill, the former Army scientist who is suing the government for identifying him as "a person of interest" in the anthrax investigation.

For months, the Justice Department had opposed Hatfill's attempts to begin deposing government witnesses, citing the sensitive nature of the investigation. Hatfill's attorneys said that stalled their efforts to identify the source of leaks in the massive probe.

Until yesterday, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton deferred to the government's concerns. But Walton also said that Hatfill must eventually have an opportunity to explore the subject, and the Justice Department told the judge that it is now willing to permit some questioning.

Hatfill filed suit in 2003, alleging that then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other federal officials defamed him and violated his privacy. No one has been arrested for the anthrax-laced mailings that killed five people and sickened...

Medical teams trying to stamp out the worst recorded incidence of Marburg virus in Angola are beginning to get the deadly outbreak under control as cooperation from stricken communities improves, the U.N. health agency said Saturday.

The virus, closely related to the feared Ebola virus, has caused hemorrhagic fever in 266 people and killed 244 of them since March, when the outbreak first came to the attention of health authorities.

As communities begin to understand the dangers of the virus, though, the number of new cases has dropped from an average of 35 per week to 15, according to the World Health Organization.

"This is good news, but it doesn't mean the outbreak is over," said Dr. Fatoumata Diallo, the WHO representative in Angola.

"The chain of transmission is being broken as we speak. However, this is the most critical time now in the response," said Dr. Mike Ryan, the WHO's top outbreak specialist from the agency's headquarters in Geneva. "Continuing and intensifying the effort is what we need to do now, not relax."

Efforts to educate communities about the disease, which is spread through direct contact with body fluids, and about the need to isolate patients both when they're ill and after death has been paying off, experts said. Medical teams also have tried to encourage cooperation by being more sensitive to villagers' fears about the health measures...