WHO issues global alert over Ebola outbreak
Sopuruchi Onwuka, with agency reports
The World Health Organization (WHO) has placed the international community is on alert after it confirmed the existence of a new outbreak of the Marburg virus in Tanzania.
The outbreak has since triggered alarm bells to international travelers as the virus inflicts a disease that currently has no medical remedy.
The Marburg virus, which belongs to the Ebola family, is known to be highly lethal, with a mortality rate of 90%. The epidemic has already injured dozens of people and claimed eight lives.
The highly virulent pathogen that causes hemorrhagic fever in humans was first detected in the Kagera region of north-west Tanzania.
The Marburg virus has a high mortality rate which causes concern among health experts.
At present, there’s no specific treatment or approved vaccine to combat it, which complicates its management. The first symptoms of the virus are high fever, severe headaches and malaise. As the disease progresses, more serious symptoms, such as internal and external bleeding, may appear.
A sample from a remote Tanzanian region tests positive for Marburg disease, confirming WHO fears.
Tanzania’s president said Monday that one sample from a remote part of northern Tanzania tested positive for Marburg disease.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan spoke in Dodoma, the capital, alongside World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
WHO had on January 14 suspected outbreak of Marburg that had killed eight people in Tanzania’s Kagera region. Tanzanian health officials had disputed the report hours later, saying tests on samples had returned negative results.
Hassan said Monday that further tests had confirmed a case of Marburg. Twenty-five other samples were negative, she said.
Like Ebola, the Marburg virus originates in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals or with surfaces, such as contaminated bedsheets.
Symptoms include fever, muscle pains, diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases death from extreme blood loss. There is no authorized vaccine or treatment for Marburg.
This is the second outbreak of Marburg in Kagera since 2023. It comes exactly a month after Rwanda, which shares with a border with Kagera, declared its own outbreak of the disease was over.
Rwandan officials reported a total of 15 deaths and 66 cases in the outbreak first declared on Sept. 27, with the majority of those affected health care workers who handled the first patients.
