Marburg Deaths in Luanda Administratively Reduced to Four
Recombinomics Commentary
April 19, 2005
The daily update from the Angola Ministry of Health has continued to administratively remove Marburg cases. The number of Luanda cases in the April 17 report has fallen to six. Of these six, four have died and two have been confirmed. Last week the number had grown to twelve cases including six dead, so the daily revisions have now started removing some of the previously reported deaths, as well as previously reported cases.
It seems likely that the two confirmed cases are the first two reported cases, a 15 year-old male and the Italian pediatrician, both of whom died on March 24. If these are the two confirmed cases, then the Vietnamese doctor who died the next day has not been confirmed, nor have the other two reported deaths last month. Those deaths were a baby under the age of one who died on March 28, and another Luanda death on March 31.
Three additional Luanda patients were described in detail in media reports. One was a Portuguese national who was admitted to a military hospital in Luanda last month. Another was a 12 year-old girl initially seen at the Cacuaco Health Centre. When she began to hemorrhage, she was transferred to Americo Boavida in Luanda on March 27. A week later a second Cacuaco case was described. She was 22 and transfer to Luanda was delayed because there was only one ambulance available at the clinic in Cacuaco, a slum on the outskirts of Luanda.
Other possible cases described in media reports were the first patient in the Americo Boavida isolation ward, a malaria patient, as well as a Cuban physician, both of whom died.
Thus, of the 10 patients detailed in media reports, only six remain on the official list. The Marburg death toll for Luanda has "officially" fallen to four.
In the April 17 report, the lone remaining case in Malange was discarded, reducing the Marburg positive provinces outside of Uige to five.