The State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) issued an order on Monday to all local quarantine departments to strengthen checks on visitors from Angola.

If local quarantine departments identify confirmed or suspected cases of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, they are to place the individuals in special isolation areas and handle their personal goods with care.

The notice also required China's International Travel Healthcare Center and local quarantine departments to provide information about the virus to Chinese citizens who plan to travel to Angola.

People in China who are from or have visited Angola should report to the local quarantine department if they experience fever, headache, muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhea or rash.

Both the Marburg virus and the disease are related to Ebola. Many of the early symptoms of Marburg hemorrhagic fever are similar to those of other infectious diseases, such as malaria or typhoid fever. In advanced stages, it causes jaundice, delirium, liver failure and extensive hemorrhage. Fatality rates can run as high as 92 percent.

Angolan health minister Sebastiao Veloso reported that his country has so far recorded 175 cases of the disease, with 155 dead nationwide, 29 of them in the past four days. The epicenter of the outbreak is in the northern province of Uige, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some 80 percent of the cases involve children under the age of 15.

There is no vaccine to prevent infection with the virus or effective medicine to cure the disease. Like Ebola, the Marburg virus spreads on contact with body fluids such as blood, urine, excrement, vomit and saliva.

The city of Shenzhen and China's Ministry of Health last week denied rumors that there had been a case of Ebola virus infection in that city. It is not known whether those rumors had any connection with the Angolan Marburg outbreak.

(Xinhua News Agency April 5, 2005)