Posted on 10/05/2014 3:40:59 PM PDT by markomalley
Uganda is grappling to contain the deadly Marburg hemorrhagic fever after confirmatory laboratory tests turned positive.
The outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic fever which was announced here on Sunday by Elioda Tumwesigye, the minister of state for health, has left one person, the index case dead, one person in isolation and over 80 others being monitored both in central and western Uganda.
"The Ministry of Health would like to inform the country of an outbreak of Marburg which has so far killed one person," Tumwesigye told reporters here at the ministry of health headquarters.
According to the ministry of health, the index case died on Sept. 28 after developing signs of Marburg which were later confirmed by laboratory tests. The deceased's brother has also developed signs and is currently under isolation at Mengo Hospital in the capital Kampala.
Out of the 80 people being monitored, over 60 are health workers who made contact with the index case who was also a medical worker. Thirty-eight workers are being monitored at Mengo Hospital while the 22 others are being monitored in Mpigi.
Tumwesigye said 20 other people who were involved in the burial process of the deceased are also being monitored in Kasese district in western Uganda.
"The ministry of health calls upon the public to remain calm and on alert amidst this epidemic. All suspected cases can be reported to the ministry of health hotline," he said at the joint media briefing with the World Health Organization (WHO).
Wondimagegnehu Alemu, WHO Country Representative to Uganda said that the disease can be contained and therefore there is no cause for alarm.
"WHO does not recommend any travel ban but the public should follow all the necessary precautions which have been put in place, " Alemu said.
"We are doing what is recommended to contain the outbreak and also making sure all the listed contacts are got," he added.
Minister Tumwesigye said WHO and Médecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders have already dispatched assistance.
"WHO is providing technical and logistical support to all the affected facilities," he said, adding that the ministry of health has also delivered personal protective equipment and other supplies to Mengo Hospital, Mpigi and Kagando Health Center in Kasese district.
Tumwesigye said that there is no relation between this Marburg outbreak and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa which has left over 3,000 people dead.
"There is no connection between these two outbreaks. We cannot link this to what is happening in West Africa," he said noting that two hemorrhagic fevers are different.
The Marburg virus was last reported in Uganda in 2012. It was reported that at that time four members of the same family in the western Ugandan district of Kabala died of Marburg.
According to the WHO, Marburg is a severe and highly fatal disease caused by a virus from the same family as the one that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever.
According to the global health body, the illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with severe headache and malaise.
Case fatality rates have varied greatly, from 25 percent in the initial laboratory-associated outbreak in 1967, to more than 80 percent in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1998-2000, to even higher in the outbreak that began in Angola in late 2004.
Currently some West African states are facing a related disease- - Ebola -- which has left more than 3,000 people dead.
We could invade Canada like the mexicans and everyone else is doing here.
again the WHGO this time saying travel ban not necessary. Seems they aren’t concerned with containing a virus. Aren’t the WHO and CDC “supposed” to be trying to contain the outbreaks and not spread them? What is their motivation to do the opposite?
Then we must bring it here and help in sharing the pain and suffering./s
From what I remember from reading "The Hot Zone", it may be a very old virus. IIRC the Reston, Virginia facility had a second outbreak after it was decontaminated following the first outbreak. Eventually, the building needed to be demolished, since nobody was willing to place their stock of expensive monkeys at risk. I am not convinced that the virus is as fragile as many experts contend.
Might as well start bring people with Marburg here too! It’s the politically correct thing to do.
O’Bola will draw up an executive order to bring all infected Ugandans to America.
So now we have three distinct filovirus outbreaks at the same time; Ebola Zaire in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, and...; Ebola Congo in Congo Republic; and Marburg in Uganda.
Trying to recall the Bond film villain who said, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
Perhaps you're mixing that up with the virus of the movie "Outbreak", which had those characteristics (esp. the 48 hr meltdown). That's not Ebola, as even the movie pointed out. Ebola is slower than that.
Forgot the “unexpectedly” in their news release. Let’s see, we have Ebola in West Africa, Marburg in Eastern Africa, and Entero D68, formerly in Central America and now in North America....who could have guessed the “unexpected simultaneous explosions of diseases” .... what rotten luck.
This sounds terrible.
You are correct that there are three concurrent distinct outbreaks of Filoviridae, but there is no such species as “Congo”, the outbreak in Congo is also believed to be Zaire ebolavirus. There are currently five known species of the Filoviridae virus family, genus Ebolavirus: Bundibugyo ebolavirus, Reston ebolavirus, Sudan ebolavirus, Tai Forest ebolavirus, and Zaire ebolavirus. Marburg is a distinct genus of Filoviridae with a single member, Marburg marburgvirus (formerly Lake Victoria marburgvirus).
Just pray it doesn’t spread from Uganda to nearby Kenya!!!
Auric Goldfinger
Are you sure this government would even consider you moving?
A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread
O’bola and his pals will “lock down” American states before they stop the disease from entering the nation.
The average mortality rate of Marburg is about 80%. The average mortality rate of Ebola (all strains) is about 67%. The average mortality rate of Ebola Zaire (the strain involved in both current outbreaks) is about 79%. The mortality of the current outbreak has been less than 60% and is not included in these calculations.
I calculated these averages using the numbers from this Marburg table and the Ebola table here.
You don't want to come down with Ebola or Marburg. Or any other disease that you might get from a bat, for that matter.
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