The Marburg virus epidemic in Equatorial Guinea has left 20 people dead over the past two months, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday.
The outbreak of the haemorrhagic fever, which is almost as deadly as Ebola, has now spread beyond the province of Kie-Ntem, where it caused the first known deaths in January, and has reached Bata, the economic capital of the small central African country, according to the government.
The spread of Marburg “is a critical signal to scale up response efforts to quickly stop the chain of transmission and avert a potential large-scale outbreak and loss of life,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa.
Between March 11-20, eight new cases were identified, six of which proved fatal, the Equatorial Guinea government said on its website, without giving a total toll since the beginning of the epidemic.
The last official death toll, on February 28, was 11 victims.
The WHO said that “so far, there are 20 probable cases and 20 deaths” in the country.
The new cases have been reported from Kie-Ntem in the east, Litoral in the west and the Centro Sur provinces, all of which have borders with Cameroon and Gabon.
The epidemic is therefore now a serious problem in three of Equatorial Guinea’s four mainland provinces.
In eastern Africa, Tanzania said Tuesday that five people had died from the virus, while neighboring Uganda, which had its last outbreak in 2017, said it was on “high alert”.
The WHO said additional experts in epidemiology, logistics, health operations and infection prevention and control would be deployed in the coming days.
The agency is also supporting the health authorities in neighbouring Cameroon and Gabon to ramp up outbreak readiness and response capabilities.
The Marburg virus causes severe fever, often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.
It is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes Ebola, which has wreaked havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa.
The suspected natural source of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, which carries the pathogen but does not fall sick from it.
The virus takes its name from the German city of Marburg, where it was first identified in 1967, in a lab where workers had been in contact with infected green monkeys imported from Uganda.
The animals can pass the virus to primates in close proximity, including humans, and human-to-human transmission then occurs through contact with blood or other body fluids.
Fatality rates in confirmed cases have ranged from 24 per cent to 88 per cent in previous outbreaks, depending on the virus strain and case management, according to WHO.
There are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments, but potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies, as well as early candidate vaccines, are being evaluated, the WHO says
