Two more deaths from marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea | Abroad

“The alert system received eight reports two days ago, including two deaths with symptoms of the disease,” said Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba. The date of the deaths has not been clarified.

The authorities are now working on a better measurement system to track the spread of the epidemic. “48 contacts have been registered, four of them have already developed symptoms,” said the minister.

Between January 7 and February 7, nine people had died from the disease. It is the first time that the highly contagious virus has had an outbreak in Equatorial Guinea. A day later, the World Health Organization (WHO) convened an emergency meeting. The government then announced that three people with mild symptoms had been placed in isolation in a hospital in a sparsely populated area bordering Gabon and Cameroon.

The Marburg virus is a rare but highly contagious pathogen that mainly occurs in central and eastern Africa. The disease is transmitted to humans by bats and spread to humans through direct contact with bodily fluids or through surfaces and materials. The virus takes its name from the German city of Marburg, where it was detected in 1967. This happened after laboratory workers fell ill after contact with infected monkeys imported from Uganda.

The symptoms are high fever, severe vomiting and blood in the stool. The disease is fatal in most cases. There is no vaccine. The most important thing is to isolate the patients as soon as possible and trace all people with whom they have been in contact to prevent further spread. Depending on the available medical care, mortality is between 25 and 90 percent. The Marburg virus can kill a healthy person within a week.