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Angola Closes Border to Avoid Ebola Spread

by francisrivera | January 6, 2009 at 01:14 am

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It was just last month that the Philippines meat markets suffered a blow from the "Ebola" scare. Later knowing that the strain believed to have infected swine has a non-lethal effect to humans, the Reston ebolavirus is non-pathogenic to humans.

There now poses new threats of outbreaks as Angola shuts up its borders to prevent a spread of a deadly strain of Ebola from spreading over Congo's borders.

LUANDA (Reuters) - Angola closed part of its northeastern border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Monday to stop the contagious Ebola virus from spreading into the oil-rich African nation, the health minister said.

Jose Van-Dunem said Angolan authorities would ban all trade and movement of people from the diamond-rich province of Lunda Norte to the DRC where an outbreak of Ebola is suspected of infecting 40 people -- including 13 deaths -- since November.

"We are suspending all movement of people and trade with the DRC in the province of Lunda Norte," he told journalists, adding that no cases of Ebola, which causes vomiting, diarrhoea, and internal and external bleeding, had been diagnosed in Angola.

It was August 30, 2007 when 103 people were infected by a suspected hemorrhagic fever outbreak in the village of Kampungu in Congo. The spread started after the funerals of two village chiefs, and 217 people in 4 villages fell ill.

The World Health Organization sent a team to take blood samples for analysis and confirmed that many of the cases are the result of Ebolavirus.

Congo's last major Ebola epidemic killed 245 people in 1995 in Kikwit, about 200 miles from the source of the August 2007 outbreak.

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