With West Africa, and indeed the rest of the world, still reeling from the deaths brought about by the Ebola virus, the recent death of a Ugandan hospital technician of another deadly viral disease, Marburg Haemorrhagic Fever (MHF), has brought fresh fears.
Uganda’s Ministry of Health disclosed that a total of 99 people who had been in contact with the victim had been moved to quarantine. These contacts are being monitored for signs and symptoms of the disease after tests confirmed that the 30-year-old man who worked as a radiographer in a Kampala hospital died of the disease. The man was said to have had a headache, abdominal pains, diarrhoea and vomited blood before he died.
Marburg virus was first identified in 1967, after simultaneous outbreaks in Marburg (from which the disease takes its name) and Frankfurt both in Germany, Belgrade, Serbia and Yugoslavia. It was later traced back to monkeys imported from Uganda for laboratory work. Since then, the virus has appeared sporadically, with just a dozen outbreaks on record. The most recent outbreak, also in Uganda, in 2012, killed four out of 15 patients, according to the United States of America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Marburg virus is similar to the Ebola virus in many ways than one. They both cause illnesses marked by severe bleeding (haemorrhage), organ failure and, in many cases, death. The Marburg virus is a genetically unique zoonotic (transmissible from animal to man) RNA virus of the filovirus family. The five species of Ebola virus are the only other known members of the filovirus family. The reservoir host of Marburg virus is the African fruit bat which, when infected with the virus, do not to show obvious signs of illness.
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