Uganda Orders Marburg Screening After Tanzania Outbreak.
Following a deadly outbreak of the Marburg virus in Tanzania, Uganda has instructed its health officials to increase screening along its border with Tanzania.
On Tuesday, Tanzania reported that five people had died after contracting a highly lethal virus that causes severe fever and is frequently accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.
Henry Mwebesa, Uganda’s director general of health services, instructed officials to “be on the lookout” for the disease in a letter sent to all district health officers on Wednesday and viewed by AFP.
He instructed officials in all districts bordering Tanzania to “begin screening all incoming passengers at entry points” for symptoms, urging them to act “immediately.”
In addition to the five victims in Tanzania, three patients are receiving hospital treatment, and authorities are tracing 161 contacts, the Tanzanian health ministry announced on Tuesday, urging citizens to remain calm.
Last week, Tanzania dispatched a rapid response team to its northwestern Kagera region, which borders Uganda, to investigate a mysterious illness later identified as Marburg hemorrhagic fever.
The Marburg virus is a member of the so-called filovirus family, which also includes the devastating Ebola virus in Africa.
The last Marburg outbreak in Uganda, which shares a porous border with Tanzania, occurred in 2017.
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The East African nation has just emerged from a nearly four-month-long Ebola outbreak that claimed the lives of 55 people before it was declared over in January.
The suspected natural source of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, which carries the pathogen without becoming ill.
The virus derives its name from the German city of Marburg, where it was first identified in 1967, in a laboratory where workers had come into contact with infected Ugandan green monkeys.
The animals can transmit the virus to humans and other primates nearby, and human-to-human transmission occurs through contact with blood or other body fluids.
According to the World Health Organization, fatality rates for confirmed cases have ranged from 24% to 88% in previous outbreaks, depending on the virus strain and case management.
Currently, there are no vaccines or antiviral treatments, but the WHO is evaluating potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies, and drug therapies, as well as early candidate vaccines.
The outbreak in Tanzania is concurrent with cases in the West African nation of Equatorial Guinea. In South Africa, Angola, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, previous outbreaks and isolated cases have been reported.
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