Burial rituals -- a problem in Zaire virus fight
KINSHASA, Zaire - A nurse from Zaire's Ebola virus zone who slipped out of quarantine in Kinshasa and disappeared among the capital's five million people, raising fears of a further spread of the deadly disease, has been found.
Health officials said Tuesday said they would check if she had the disease.
The officials told a daily news briefing that 86 of the 93 people reported with the deadly and incurable disease had now died. No cases have been reported in the capital Kinshasa.
Outside the sprawling central African country, more governments started screening or monitoring passengers arriving from Zaire or elsewhere in Africa to ensure they were not carrying what is one of the most lethal diseases known to man.
"We have just found where she is," Bompenda Bonkumo, head of a national committee tracking the progress of the disease, said of the nurse. Officials had the necessary equipment to find out whether she had the disease, he said. "We will be able to advi se on her state of health tomorrow."
A riverboat captain, also placed in isolation in Kinshasa after arriving from Kikwit, had been given a clean bill of health, health officials said.
A statement from the committee said that 93 cases had been registered by Tuesday, of whom 72 had died in hospitals and 14 outside of hospitals. Most cases were in the town of Kikwit, 310 miles from Kinshasa.
Diplomats said the ambassadors of Belgium and the United States were due to visit Kikwit Wednesday with the Zairean health minister.
Kinshasa Gov. Bernadin Mungul Diaka said earlier the nurse had absconded from the university health center.
The virus, for which there is no vaccine or cure, is spread through contact with blood or bodily fluids and kills by causing uncontrollable bleeding.
Authorities in Kinshasa have tightened roadblocks on highways from the outbreak zone and issued leaflets and graphic posters telling members of the public not to touch corpses or open wounds.
The committee tracking the epidemic -- which broke out in Kikwit in April and has spread to at least four neighboring towns -- had asked for quarantine for 25 foreign journalists who visited Kikwit Sunday but no action has so far been taken.
Countries as far away as the Philippines, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen started monitoring certain plane passengers, following steps taken by Egypt and Zaire's former colonial ruler Belgium.
Angola partly closed the border with its northern oil-rich Cabinda enclave. Other neighbors, Sudan and the Central African Republic tightened border checks and South Africa began monitoring travelers from Zaire.
An expatriate family working for a mining firm close to the Angolan border was evacuated to Kinshasa and sent straight into quarantine in a city clinic.
In a sign of hope, the World Health Organization said four victims in Kikwit were convalescing and one, a doctor, had recovered and left the hospital.