In February A 23-year-old Tanzanian fisherman had just returned from a busy trading post in the middle of Lake Victoria and suddenly fell ill. Upon returning to his home in Bukoba, a district in northwestern Tanzania, he was attacked with vomiting and diarrhea. He had a fever and started bleeding from an orifice in his body. He died on March 1st.
His family and community held regular burials, but had no idea that this gathering would start a deadly outbreak. Soon some of the attendees began to fall ill. On March 16, Tanzania’s Chief Medical Officer announced that an unknown “potentially contagious” disease had been detected and a rapid response team had been dispatched to Bukoba. Finally, five days later, a PCR test performed at Tanzania’s National Institute of Public Health revealed the cause to be the Marburg virus.
This was not Marburg’s first appearance of the year. On 13 February, the first-ever outbreak was reported in Equatorial Guinea. A deadly virus spreading simultaneously in new places on opposite sides of the continent is a big warning. It shows that it is not done.
Marburg disease shares many characteristics with the Ebola virus. These viruses are part of the same family. Similar to Ebola, it causes viral hemorrhagic fever, causing dangerous internal bleeding and organ damage. In some outbreaks, up to 90% of cases have died. As of this writing, five of the eight confirmed cases in Tanzania have died. It takes a few days to three weeks for symptoms to appear, and the virus can be spread through human contact, especially through bodily fluids of infected people and dead bodies.bats eating fruit Rosetos Family members are suspect hosts for the virus.
“In this village, most people believe it’s Ebola,” says Abella Kakul, who lives in Ibaraijiv, a 10-minute drive from the Bukoba-affected village. But he has one big difference. Unlike Ebola, there are no approved vaccines or antiviral drugs against Marburg disease. Fluids, electrolytes, blood and oxygen can be administered to treat symptoms, but nothing yet contains or fights the virus.”Supportive care for the patient is the mainstay of treatment,” said Tanzania’s health minister. Ummy Mwalimu said at her late March press conference.
Thankfully, vaccine development doesn’t have to start from scratch. Several experimental vaccines have shown promise in non-human primates, and the Sabin Institute’s vaccine has also recently been tested in small numbers of humans. It has been shown to be highly safe and to stimulate immune responses.
The World Health Organization is now planning to begin testing several experimental vaccines using what is known as ring vaccination. ,” says Ana-Maria Henao Restrepo, co-leader of the WHO R&D Blueprint on Epidemics. “In our experience, there are about 20 to her 50, depending on the social her network in each case.” Statistical analysis of the number of contacts subsequently infected allows researchers to calculate the effectiveness of the vaccine. It should look like this.
