Angola Says Marburg Outbreak Coming Under Control

Reuters reports that Angolan officials believe the Marburg outbreak is coming under control in the north of the country:

Deputy Health Minister Jose Van Dunem said government and international health workers were turning to traditional healers and leaders to talk to the population.

"We already have it under control," he told Reuters in an interview in the capital Luanda late Sunday.

"There have been no new cases in other provinces. We know exactly how to cut the epidemiological chain of transmission."

International health workers in Uige have not yet confirmed the outbreak is under control.

I pray the Angolan officials are right, but I fear they are overly optimistic. The Angolan government doesn't seem to have handled the outbreak well.

UPDATE: Reuters reports that the World Health Organization (WHO) officials said Sunday that the Angola's Marburg outbreak was far from over:

"We haven't contained it. We haven't broken the transition cycle. We are still finding cases," WHO spokesman Dave Daigle told Reuters in Uige, the northern province which has borne the brunt of the Marburg outbreak.

"We are quite terrified that this could still really take off. It could spread very quickly in Uige or it could spread somewhere like Luanda," he said.