The Ghanian Government has declared the first outbreak of the highly contagious and deadly Marburg virus, spurring a nationwide response to the disease.
The news came shortly after a World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre laboratory in Accra confirmed earlier results.
A press statement made by the World Health Organisation confirmed two patients have died already from the illness in the southern Ashanti region of Ghana on June 27th and 28th.
Both of them, men who were 26 and 51, showed symptoms including diarrhoea, fever, nausea and vomiting. Other symptoms, as noted by the press, include fever, bloody diarrhea, bleeding from the gums, skin, eyes, and bloody urine.
“The laboratory corroborated the results from the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, which suggested their illness was due to the Marburg virus,” WHO reported.
People who have caught the virus in a previous outbreak had a 24% to 88% chance of dying from it, depending on the strain they caught and the care they had access to. In addition, more than 90 contacts have been confirmed with the illness and are being monitored. The number includes health workers and community members.
There is no vaccine or cure. Though WHO said it has been supporting a joint national investigative team in the Ashanti Region as well as Ghana’s health authorities by deploying experts, making available personal protective equipment, bolstering disease surveillance, testing, tracing contacts and working with communities to alert and educate them about the risks and dangers of the disease, and to collaborate with the emergency response teams.
Marburg is a cousin of the virus that causes Ebola virus disease (EVD). Like Ebola, the disease caused by the Marburg virus is a hemorrhagic fever.
It is only the second time the zoonotic disease has been detected in West Africa. Guinea confirmed a single case in an outbreak that was declared over on 16 September 2021, five weeks after the initial case was detected.
Previous outbreaks and sporadic cases of Marburg in Africa have been reported in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. WHO has reached out to neighbouring high-risk countries and they are on alert.
Marburg is transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, surfaces and materials. Illness begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache and malaise.
