Charles Teves
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned against the Marburg virus disease as it may infect many very easily.
WHO’s Africa director Dr. Matshidiso Moeti said the virus could “spread far and wide” and should be “stopped in its tracks”.
People may catch the Marburg virus disease from fruit bats and can be transmitted through bodily fluids.
The last outbreak was in 2005 in Angola. Symptoms include headache, fever, muscle pains, vomiting blood, and bleeding.
Health experts recommend upping water intake and treating each symptom when infected, but no definitive treatment has been discovered so far.
Just last week, a patient in Guinea who tested positive for the virus died. He was from the town of Guéckédou, the same area where a recent Ebola outbreak occurred.
Moeti commended “the alertness and the quick investigative action by Guinea’s health workers”.
Authorities are tracking down the people the patient may have come into contact with before succumbing to the deadly disease. Dr. Krutika Kuppalli told BBC that around 150 people had been targeted, including a health worker.
The first Marburg outbreak happened in Germany in 1967, where only seven people died. However, the Angola outbreak in 2005 killed over 200.
