“An international medical charity battling a hemorrhagic fever that so far has killed 181 Angolans has urged the government to close the regional hospital here, at the center of the outbreak, saying the medical center itself is a source of the deadly infection. Doctors Without Borders, the global relief organization that runs an isolation ward at the hospital for victims of the deadly fever, Marburg virus, told Angolan officials on Friday that the hospital should be closed if the rapidly spreading epidemic was to be contained.

Two other hospitals within 60 miles of Uige may also have to be shut down, said Monica de Castellarnau, the organization’s emergency coordinator in Uige, the provincial capital, where the outbreak was first reported.

That possibility raises the prospect of a second health care crisis, one in which hundreds of thousands of people already facing a disease that is almost always fatal may suddenly have no access to hospital care. But in an interview in the streets of Uige, where an intensive effort is under way to find and isolate new cases of the virus, Ms. Castellarnau said there might be no alternative.” (New York Times )

Africa’s Sequel: “When it opened five months ago, Hotel Rwanda garnered admiring reviews, especially for the performances of Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo. It went on to receive three Academy Award nominations and a raft of prizes. And it has been credited with increasing awareness of the 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 Rwandans, most of them Tutsi.

Clearly, it had a big effect on many who saw it. What’s less clear is the effect it had on the film industry. Will its impressive critical success inspire – or shame – American filmmakers to attempt more realistic portrayals of Africa than they have in the past? Or will its modest box-office success reinforce the financial logic behind the dark continent clichés that Hollywood has been dispensing for 70 years?” (New York Times )

“…tissue samples from a deer that one farmer donated for the banquet tested positive for chronic wasting disease, and the results were discovered after the meat had been eaten at the banquet. It is the deer version of mad cow disease, and the first documented case in New York.” (New York Times )

“An international medical charity battling a hemorrhagic fever that so far has killed 181 Angolans has urged the government to close the regional hospital here, at the center of the outbreak, saying the medical center itself is a source of the deadly infection. Doctors Without Borders, the global relief organization that runs an isolation ward at the hospital for victims of the deadly fever, Marburg virus, told Angolan officials on Friday that the hospital should be closed if the rapidly spreading epidemic was to be contained.

Two other hospitals within 60 miles of Uige may also have to be shut down, said Monica de Castellarnau, the organization’s emergency coordinator in Uige, the provincial capital, where the outbreak was first reported.

That possibility raises the prospect of a second health care crisis, one in which hundreds of thousands of people already facing a disease that is almost always fatal may suddenly have no access to hospital care. But in an interview in the streets of Uige, where an intensive effort is under way to find and isolate new cases of the virus, Ms. Castellarnau said there might be no alternative.” (New York Times )