Over 150 families residing in Angola's northern Uige province, whose relatives died of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, have been under medical vigilance, local media reported Thursday.

Chief of the National Technical Commission on the Marburg Paulo Folo was quoted as saying the commission decided to follow up these families to facilitate a better control on the infection of the virus.

He explained that due to the usual practices, such as washing of dead bodies and direct contact with patients, so many people have been infected in the communities in Uige and thus, are infecting others who are out of the control of the health authorities.

The commission, comprising national and foreign health technicians, is currently holding sensitization campaign in communities and churches located in the province, on the measures to fight the illness.

Meanwhile, a team with the non-governmental organization Doctors Without Border on Wednesday met with traditional midwives for exchange of opinion, in the ambit of the mechanisms to avoid the spreading of the sickness.

At least 215 people died of the Marburg hemorrhagic fever, since its outbreak in October 2004 in Uige, according to the reports.

The Ebola-like Marburg spreads through contact with bodily fluids and can kill rapidly. There is no vaccine.

So far, the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an international humanitarian group, Doctors Without Borders, have deployed teams in Uige to combat the virus.

Marburg gets its name from a German town where it was first reported in the 1960s after researchers there had contracted the disease from monkeys imported from Africa. In the last known outbreak of Marburg, 123 people were killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1998 and 2000.