Ghana has announced the country’s first outbreak of Marburg virus disease, after a World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre laboratory confirmed results of two patients. THE WILLS reports.

The Institute Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, received samples from each of the two patients from the southern Ashanti region of Ghana (both deceased and unrelated), who showed symptoms including diarrhoea, fever, nausea and vomiting. Information Guide Nigeria

The laboratory corroborated the results from the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, which suggested their illness was due to the Marburg virus.

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WHO has been supporting a joint national investigative team in the Ashanti Region, as well as Ghana’s health authorities by deploying experts, making available personal protective equipment, bolstering disease surveillance, testing, tracing contacts and working with communities to alert and educate them about the risks and dangers of the disease, and to collaborate with the emergency response teams. In addition, a team of WHO experts will be deployed over the next couple of days to provide coordination, risk assessment and infection prevention measures. jamb results

“Health authorities have responded swiftly, getting a head start preparing for a possible outbreak. This is good because, without immediate and decisive action, Marburg can easily get out of hand. WHO is on the ground supporting health authorities and now that the outbreak is declared, we are marshalling more resources for the response”, said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa.

More than 90 contacts, including health workers and community members, have been identified and are being monitored.

Marburg is a highly infectious viral haemorrhagic fever in the same family as the more well-known Ebola virus disease. It is only the second time the zoonotic disease has been detected in West Africa.

Guinea confirmed a single case in an outbreak that was declared over on 16 September, 2021, five weeks after the initial case was detected.

Previous outbreaks and sporadic cases of Marburg in Africa have been reported in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.

WHO has reached out to neighbouring high-risk countries and they are on alert.

Marburg is transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, surfaces and materials. Illness begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache and malaise. Patients have been observed to develop severe haemorrhagic signs within seven days.

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