Six Dead: Is Marburg Virus a Growing Threat?

Six Dead: Is Marburg Virus a Growing Threat?
Six Dead: Is Marburg Virus a Growing Threat?

United States: The outbreak was declared by Rwanda on September 27 and they confirmed that six people have died. At that time, authorities had mentioned that the first two cases were identified among patients in health facilities and that efforts were being made to “establish the source of the disease.”

The source still could not be identified, and this has spored fears of spreading the virus in the small central African nation. The administration of the disease isolating patients and their contacts plays a central role in the containing of diseases such as Marburg viral hemorrhagic fever.

As reported by HealthDay, The World Health Organization has cautioned that cases in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, could spread across borders because the city has an international airport and it is also reachable by road with other countries in East Africa.

“WHO considers this outbreak as high at national level and high at the regional level and as low at the global level,” the WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at his briefing on Thursday referring to a Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmation is indicative of the international concern that is now being attributed to this outbreak and Germany, two people were placed in isolation in Hamburg on Thursday after

Neither of the two returned positive for the virus, the statement from the ECDC added.

Regarding the virus, German media was informed that two tracks at the railway station where the two people arrived were sealed off.

One of the respondents was a young medical student who never felt the first symptoms of the disease and asked doctors via a train. Most of the affected people are healthcare workers in six of 30 districts in Rwanda. Some of the patients reside in districts near Congo, Burundi, Uganda, and Tanzania as WHO findings show.

So there are at least 300 people who came into the contact with those confirmed to have Marburg have been identified and an unspecified number of them are in the isolation facilities which is according to the Rwandan health authorities.

Rwandan Health Minister and the Sabin Nsanzimana said Thursday that the clinical trial for the vaccination would start and within the days but failed to clarify which type of the vaccine will be used and he told the journal at an Africa Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention briefing that Rwanda is screening everyone who presents with 5,000 more test kits expected to arrive in the country.

Rwandas have been urged to avoid physical contact to help curb the spread, and strict measures include the suspension of school and hospital visits  as well as restriction on the number of those who can attend  funerals for the Marburg victims and home vigils aren’t allowed in the event a death is linked to Marburg.