This is only the second time that the Ebola-like Marburg virus has been detected in West Africa.
Two deaths caused by the Marburg virus have been confirmed in the West African country of Ghana.
Both of the patients had diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting. They died of the disease in a hospital in Ghana’s southern Ashanti region.
The deaths were confirmed to be caused by the Marburg virus in laboratory tests in both Ghana and Senegal.
The authorities are now doing everything they can to prevent the spread of the virus. Everyone who was in contact with the deceased has been quarantined, but none of the nearly one hundred people have developed symptoms so far.
Causes hemorrhagic fever like Ebola
Depending on the virus strain and the quality of treatment, 24 to 88 percent of those infected die from Marburg disease caused by the Marburg virus.
Like Ebola, Marburg virus is a filovirus that causes severe hemorrhagic fever. There is no medical treatment for that either. Like Ebola, Marburg virus infections are believed to originate from fruit bats, monkeys and other infected mammals.
The Marburg virus was first identified in 1967, when 31 people became ill and seven died in outbreaks in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and Belgrade, Serbia. The source of the infections was traced to green maracas imported from Uganda.
In Angola, more than 300 died in 2005
Since then, the Marburg virus has appeared on the African continent a dozen times, and in West Africa the virus is now occurring only for the second time. The first was last year in Guinea, where one person was confirmed to have contracted the virus, but no new cases of the disease appeared.
The most serious epidemic was in Angola, located in southern Africa, in 2005, when, according to the BBC, 374 people fell ill and 329 died from the disease. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1998 and 2000, 154 people fell ill with the Marburg virus, and 128 died.
In addition to these, the disease has been found in, for example, Uganda in 2012 and 2017, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
In Europe, only one person is known to have died from the Marburg virus in the last 40 years. Similarly, there is one confirmed case of death in the United States, when the deceased had returned from a cave exploration trip from Uganda, says BBC (switch to another service).
Sources: AP, AFP, Reuters