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17 Health Care Worker Deaths May Close 3 Hospitals in Uige
An international medical charity battling a hemorrhagic fever that so far has killed 181 Angolans has urged the government to close the regional hospital here, at the center of the outbreak, saying the medical center itself is a source of the deadly infection. Doctors Without Borders, the global relief organization that runs an isolation ward at the hospital for victims of the deadly fever, Marburg virus, told Angolan officials on Friday that the hospital should be closed if the rapidly spreading epidemic was to be contained. Two other hospitals within 60 miles of Uige may also have to be shut down, said Monica de Castellarnau, the organization's emergency coordinator in Uige, the provincial capital, where the outbreak was first reported. That possibility raises the prospect of a second health care crisis, one in which hundreds of thousands of people already facing a disease that is almost always fatal may suddenly have no access to hospital care. But in an interview in the streets of Uige, where an intensive effort is under way to find and isolate new cases of the virus, Other reports say efforts to find cases have almost stopped completely several days ago after workers were attacked. Ms. Castellarnau said there might be no alternative. "The hospital has been the main source of infection," she said. "We have to break that chain somehow. It is a massive public health decision, and it must be taken by the government." The breakdown of the healthcare system is a sign the epidemic is out of control. There are likely many thousands of people on the move trying to get away from the outbreak and some of those are likely infected. We may be two or three weeks away from entire countries being isolated. Posted by: phil_b 2005-04-10 |
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