Contacts of victims of Marburg virus outbreak in Ghana doing well, says WHO

All contacts of the two victims of Ghana’s first ever outbreak of the Marburg virus are doing well and almost out of the maximum incubation period of 21 days, the World Health Organisation has said.

The two confirmed cases, in the country’s southern Ashanti region, were unrelated to each other. Both were men experiencing symptoms including nausea, fever, diarrhoea and vomiting, who later died.

One, a 26-year-old, checked into hospital on June 26th and died the following day. On June 28th, a 51-year-old man checked into the same hospital and died that same day.

Samples from both patients were tested and confirmed as Marburg, a highly infectious viral haemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola. While Ebola has historically killed more people, vaccines and treatments have greatly improved Ebola survival rates in recent years, while there are no vaccines or antiviral treatments currently approved for Marburg.

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Possible symptoms include: fever; chills; headaches; a rash on the chest, back and stomach; chest pain; a sore throat; and abdominal pain. As it develops, a victim can experience severe weight loss; liver failure; hemorrhaging; multi-organ dysfunction; inflammation of the pancreas; and delirium.

This outbreak marks only the second time that Marburg has been detected in people in west Africa. The first was last year in Guinea, when a single case was confirmed in an outbreak that was declared over five weeks later.

Marburg is transmitted through direct contact with the blood, bodily fluids or tissues of infected people or wild animals, such as monkeys and fruit bats. In 2020, scientists from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention said they had found an active strain of Marburg in bat colonies in Sierra Leone, which shares a border with Guinea.

Collins Boakye-Agyemang, a spokesman for the WHO, said 98 contacts of Ghana’s two confirmed cases have been identified and were being monitored daily. By Wednesday, they will all have completed 21 days of follow-up.

“Surveillance is on high alert in the country to pick up any new cases that may come up,” Mr Boakye-Agyemang told The Irish Times by email. He said the outbreak can be declared over 42 days after the last possible known exposure to a case.

While he confirmed that there were no approved vaccines or antiviral treatments, Mr Boakye-Agyemang said supportive care, including rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids and the treatment of specific symptoms, does improve an infected person’s chances of survival.

The deadliest Marburg outbreak happened in Angola in 2005, when 329 people died out of 374 identified cases. Between 1998 and 2000, 128 people died, out of 154 identified cases, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There have been much smaller outbreaks in countries including Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.

Marburg got its name from the German town where it was first detected: Marburg, in Hesse State. In 1967, at least 29 people were infected there and seven died.