Waves of disease take toll in Africa
Old foes like malaria and cholera are now joined by Aids and MarburgApril 14, 2005
Sofia Bouderbala
Kinshasa - New epidemics, ranging from the terrifying and extremely deadly Marburg virus, through Aids to the old enemy cholera, are claiming lives across Africa as crippled health services struggle to cope.
The most vulnerable countries are those racked by civil war, including Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but even stable and relatively prosperous Senegal has fallen victim.
A total of 210 people have died in Angola from the untreatable Marburg virus since October in the worst outbreak ever recorded of the disease, the Angolan Health Ministry and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said this week.
They said 361 people were under observation for the virus, which can kill a healthy person in a week by diarrhoea and vomiting followed by severe internal bleeding.
Years of civil war in Congo has wrecked health services. A cholera outbreak that erupted in camps for civilians displaced by the fighting has now claimed 23 lives, while more than 800 people are suffering from the illness, according to the United Nations.
In Cameroon, cholera has killed 70 people out of more than 6 000 infected since the beginning of 2004, according to official figures, and in Equatorial Guinea the toll since early February this year is put at 31 by the WHO, but more than 200 by Malabo's general hospital.
Senegal is currently experiencing its first cholera epidemic for a decade. The outbreak has claimed 81 lives since March 28, with more than 6 000 cases recorded, the Health Ministry said this week.
Last week, health officials in Banjul said the outbreak had spread to neighbouring Gambia where it had killed two people.
Senegal last month hosted two concerts featuring major African music stars aimed at raising awareness in the fight against another deadly disease, malaria, which kills one African child every 30 seconds and affects some 300-million of the continent's people every year, according to the WHO.
At the same time Africa Fighting Malaria, a Johannesburg-based NGO, said Zimbabwe's political and economic turmoil had dealt a crippling blow to that country's health sector.
It predicted an explosion of HIV/Aids cases, while malaria was a major problem with possibly more than 2- million cases last year, compared with 400 000 in 1992.
Aids, Africa's number one killer, is also forecast to increase its ravages in Ivory Coast, already the West African country worst affected by the disease.
And at least 40 people have died and more than 430 taken ill with highly infectious meningococcal meningitis in Ethiopia over the past five months, the country's Health Ministry said yesterday. - Sapa-AFP.
