Virus ends town's greeting custom

UIGE, Angola -- Fearful of a deadly virus that has killed at least 210 people, inhabitants of this northern Angolan town have given up their tradition of greeting friends and acquaintances with a hug.

Instead, they tap right legs -- avoiding all skin contact -- a new custom devised to help check the spread of the Marburg virus, which is passed by contact with bodily fluids and has no known cure.

The last outbreak of Marburg, a hemorrhagic fever named after the German city where it was discovered in 1967, occurred in the African nation of Congo. It lasted from 1998 to 2000 and killed 128 people.

To check the disease's spread, foreign experts have streamed into this Angolan city 180 miles north of Luanda, the capital of the former Portugese colony on the southwest coast of Africa.

Authorities have banned the sale of monkey meat, which is common fare. Although scientists are not sure how humans get the virus, it is known that monkeys can get infected and handling carcasses is considered risky.

Teams from the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Cross and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in Uige.

Local people don't understand why the disease appeared and often resent the measures taken to contain it, officials say. For now, at least, schools remain open.

WHO said in its latest update that the death toll climbed to 210 on Monday, with 190 of the deaths reported in Uige, where the outbreak is believed to have started six months ago.

The agency said medical teams are focusing their efforts on detecting cases and quickly isolating them, as well as collecting bodies for swift burial.

But panicked residents are hiding family members who fall ill for fear they will be taken away and never be seen again, officials say. That is increasing fears of contagion, and whole families in Uige have died from the virus. The disease can also be transmitted by items like clothing and bedding contaminated by fluids from an infected person.

Also, according to Angolan tradition, the bodies of the dead are bathed before burial -- another high-risk practice.

Hostile villagers have pelted medical teams with rocks when they arrive, dressed in white protective suits and face masks, to collect the dead and remove anyone suspected of being infected.

The medics pour bleach on the bodies and place them in transparent body bags. A blood sample is taken and they are buried within hours, without ceremony.

Residents resent the intrusion.

"None of this is easy for people who are used to caring for their dead," Uige's Roman Catholic Bishop Francisco Mourisca said.

WHO disease expert Nestor Dayimirije of Uganda blamed the hostility on lack of information. "We're running late on educating the people," he said.

At WHO headquarters in Geneva, outbreak specialists are closely monitoring the security of their field staff.

At least one aid worker, Italian pediatrician Dr. Maria Bonino of the Italian aid agency Cuamm Medici con L'Africa -- Doctors with Africa -- has died of the disease.

"We have serious security concerns," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said from the U.N. health agency's headquarters. "We are assessing the situation constantly and if it deteriorates, we certainly would have to consider all our options."

Foreign experts have recruited traditional healers and Roman Catholic Church leaders to help educate residents about the disease.

Angola's protracted civil war, which ended in 2002, wrecked the country's public infrastructure, including hospitals and roads.

Uige still bears the scars of that war: some houses are still partial ruins with bullet holes and smashed walls. When the outbreak began, the hospital didn't have a single pair of medical gloves, officials said.