What Is Marburg Virus, the Deadly Disease in Ghana?
Health officials in Ghana have announced that the country is facing an outbreak of Marburg virus disease, an infectious disease with a high mortality rate.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, received samples from each of the two patients—a 26-year-old man and a 51-year-old man—from the southern Ashanti region of Ghana who were unrelated and had died of a mysterious illness. Both patients had experienced diarrhea, fever, nausea, and vomiting before their deaths and were treated at the same hospital within days of each other.
“Health authorities have responded swiftly, getting a head start preparing for a possible outbreak,” Matshidiso Moeti, M.D., WHO Regional Director for Africa, said in a statement. “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.”
More than 90 contacts of the patients, including health workers and community members, have been identified and are being monitored, the WHO says.
Marburg is serious and there is no treatment or vaccine for it. And, given all of the infectious diseases dominating headlines right now, it’s understandable to have questions. Here’s what you need to know.
What is Marburg virus disease?
Marburg virus disease (MVD) is a rare but severe hemorrhagic (bleeding) fever that can infect people and non-human primates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Marburg virus disease is caused by the Marburg virus, which is related to the Ebola virus. Marburg virus was first diagnosed in 1967, the CDC says, when outbreaks occurred simultaneously in labs in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and in Serbia. During that outbreak, 31 people became sick and seven people died. (The first people infected had been exposed to Ugandan imported African green monkeys or their tissues while conducting research.)
The African fruit bat, Rousettus aegyptiacus, is a reservoir for the disease, the CDC says. Fruit bats who have Marburg virus don’t show symptoms and can pass the virus on to people and other primates.
The virus has a high death rate, with the WHO citing fatality rates from 24% to 88% in past outbreaks depending on the strain of the virus strain and how well it was managed.
What are the symptoms of Marburg virus disease?
These are the most common symptoms of Marburg virus disease, according to the CDC:
Fever
Chills
Headache
Muscle aches and pains
About five days after someone develops symptoms, they’ll usually develop a rash on their chest, back, and stomach. After that, they may have the following symptoms:
Nausea
Vomiting
Chest pain
Sore throat
Abdominal pain
Diarrhea
Symptoms usually become more severe and can include jaundice, inflammation of the pancreas, severe weight loss, delirium, shock, liver failure, massive hemorrhaging, and multi-organ dysfunction, the CDC says.
How does Marburg virus disease spread?
Marburg virus disease usually jumps to humans from bats via contact with bat poop or aerosols, the CDC says. After that, it spreads through direct contact with blood or bodily fluids of a person who is sick with Marburg virus disease or died from the illness, from objects that were contaminated with body fluids from someone who had the disease, or in semen from a man who recovered from the virus.
Marburg virus disease is not as contagious as COVID, though. “You really need close personal contact to spread Marburg virus,” says William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “It spreads even more slowly than monkeypox.”
Infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, agrees. “Pathogens that require blood and body fluid exposure are not very contagious,” he says. They’re also “less contagious than respiratory viruses,” he adds.
How is Marburg virus disease treated?
There is no specific treatment for Marburg virus disease, the CDC says. “It’s really supportive care,” says Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York. “It can be really severe and you can have multiple organs affected. Treatment is similar to what you would do for someone with overwhelming sepsis.”
That can mean doing things like balancing the patient’s fluids and electrolytes, maintaining oxygen status and blood pressure, replacing lost blood and clotting factors, and treating any complicating infections, the CDC says.
How worried should you be about Marburg virus disease?
Marburg virus disease sounds scary, and it is. But Dr. Adalja says that this isn’t something that people outside of Ghana or its neighboring countries need to worry about right now.
“The concern is relatively low, but it’s not zero,” Dr. Russo says. “If you’re traveling to parts of the world where there’s an outbreak, you could get infected if you interact with an infected individual and could bring it back to your country of origin.” But, he adds, “this is not something to panic about.”
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