Health
Marburg Outbreak Claims 11 Lives – Is a Global Crisis Looming?
United States: In East African countries, health authorities said on Thursday that 11 people had died from Marburg hemorrhagic fever, a disease first found in patients using health facilities.
The latest Rwandan government update indicates 36 cases of disease that looks like Ebola, with 25 of them in isolation.
More about the news
On September 27, Rwanda declared an outbreak and on the next day reported six deaths, US News reported.
The first cases were found among patients in health facilities and authorities said an investigation was being carried out “to determine the origin of the infection.”
However, it’s unclear where the source of the outbreak is, causing fears that the virus is spreading through a small central African nation.
Stopping the spread of viral hemorrhagic fevers like Marburg depends upon the isolation of patients and their contacts.
In Rwanda, everyone with potential symptoms of Marburg — including high fever, headache and muscle pain — are being screened even though these symptoms are similar to malaria. https://t.co/Mib0L2sDlM
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Cases in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, would be risky to international spread since the city has an international airport and is connected by road to other cities in East Africa, the World Health Organization has warned.
What more are the experts stating?
According to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a regular briefing on Thursday while referring to the Marburg outbreak in Rwanda, “WHO assesses the risk of this outbreak as very high at the national level, high at the regional level and low at the global level,” US News reported.
The news is testimony to growing international concern over the outbreak, with two people in the northern German city of Hamburg isolated after returning from Rwanda, where they’d been in a medical facility alongside patients with Marburg virus, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said in a statement Thursday.
The ECDC statement said both tested negative for the virus.
Concern about the virus led authorities to cordon off two tracks of a railway station at which two people had arrived, German media reports said.
The other was a young medical student who had suffered symptoms of the disease and contacted doctors from the train.