_____Special Report_____

• Ebola Outbreak

By Serge Mabika
Associated Press Writer
Monday, December 10, 2001; 11:46 AM

LIBREVILLE, Gabon –– Health experts were headed Monday to the central African nation of Gabon, where 11 people have died from the highly contagious Ebola virus – and the number was expected to rise.

It was not immediately clear how many people were infected, or over what period. Government officials first said they suspected an outbreak last Tuesday, after villagers reported finding an unusually high number of dead primates, including gorillas and chimpanzees, World Wildlife Fund representative Allogo Ndong said in the capital, Libreville.

Around the same time, patients began turning up with symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea.

The World Health Organization confirmed the outbreak Sunday, saying it was in the remote northeastern province of Ogooue Ivindo, where 45 people were killed when Ebola last struck in 1996-7. The area is near the border of the Republic of Congo.

The deaths, mostly in one extended family, so far appeared to have occurred last week, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva. The toll was rising as experts were getting a better idea of the extent of the outbreak, he said.

Health officials in Gabon did not return calls seeking comment.

Health officials from around the country went to the stricken province last week to investigate, as did the WHO. Hartl said Sunday that a laboratory in the eastern city of Franceville had confirmed that the disease was Ebola, which has similar symptoms to other, less deadly hemorrhagic fevers.

Hartl said a second team of WHO specialists was being assembled to fly from Europe to Gabon on Monday evening. They will help local medical staff use "barriers" like gloves and masks to prevent contact with the bodily fluids of patients, he said.

The dead included 10 members of an extended family and a health worker – a typical pattern for Ebola, which spreads quickly to people coming in contact with the patients or their bodies.

It is the first documented outbreak of Ebola since last year, when 224 people – including health workers – died from the virus in Uganda.

Ebola is one of the most virulent viral diseases known to humankind, causing death in 50 to 90 percent of all clinically ill cases.

The virus is passed through contact with bodily fluids, such as mucus, saliva and blood, but is not airborne. It incubates for four to 10 days before flu-like symptoms set in. Eventually, the virus causes severe internal bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea. It is believed to be carried by some animals and insects, who may pass it on to humans.

There is no cure, but patients treated early for dehydration have a good chance of survival.

WHO says more than 800 people have died of the disease since the virus was first identified in 1976 in western Sudan and in a nearby region of Zaire, now Congo.

Ebola usually kills its victims faster than it can spread, burning out before it can reach too far.

© 2001 The Associated Press