These facts about Marburg fever may save your life.
What is Marburg fever?
Marburg haemorrhagic fever is a very rare, severe strain of haemorrhagic fever that affects both humans and primates. Haemorrhagic diseases are associated with or result from blood loss.
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The virus was first discovered in 1967, when outbreaks of the fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfort, Germany, and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. A total of 37 people became ill.
Exposure to African green monkeys or their tissues were reportedly at the root of the original outbreak. In Marburg, the monkeys had been imported for research and to prepare polio vaccine.
No other case was recorded until 1975, when a traveller became ill in Johannesburg and passed the virus to his travelling companion and a nurse, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 1998, a large-scale outbreak among individuals working in a gold mine occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Virus facts
The Marburg virus is a member of the filovirus family. The Ebola virus is one of the only other members of this family.
The Marburg virus is indigenous to Africa, according to the US National Institutes of Health. While the exact geographic area to which it is native is unknown, the virus seems to occur most frequently in parts of Uganda, Western Kenya and Zimbabwe.
As with the Ebola virus, the actual animal host for the Marburg virus remains a mystery.
Humans who become ill with Marburg fever may spread the virus to other people. To date, human-to-human transmission of the virus has occurred in a setting of close contact, often in a hospital.
While children are mostly affected, adults can also get Marburg fever.
Droplets of body fluids, or direct contact with persons, equipment, or other objects contaminated with infectious blood or tissues are all highly suspect as sources of disease.
Signs and symptoms
Symptoms of the disease include fever, chills, headache, and myalgia (pain in the muscles). After approximately five days, a rash may appear on the chest, back and stomach, and nausea, vomiting, chest pain, a sore throat, abdominal pain, and diarrhoea may also occur.
Symptoms become increasingly severe and may include inflammation of the pancreas, severe weight loss, shock, liver failure, massive haemorrhaging (bleeding), and multi-organ dysfunction.
Many of the symptoms of Marburg haemorrhagic fever are similar to those of other infectious diseases, such as malaria or typhoid fever, so diagnosis of the disease is difficult. There is a 25-80% chance of death.
How the disease is treated
There is no known treatment for Marburg fever. However, supportive hospital treatment can prove useful. This includes the balancing of fluid and electrolyte levels, maintaining the oxygen status and blood pressure, replacing lost blood and clotting factors and treating the patient for secondary infections. (Health24, National Institutes of Health)
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