Tanzania –
Suspected Marburg virus outbreak kills eight
The WHO considers the risk of the spread of the Marburg virus outbreak, which causes highly infectious hemorrhagic fever, to be “high”.
Published today at 1:14 a.m.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus during a press conference in Geneva, December 10, 2024.
AFP
Subscribe now and enjoy the audio playback feature.
BotTalk
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday that a suspected outbreak of the Marburg virus in Tanzania had killed eight people, stressing that the risk of spread in the country and region was “high”.
“We are aware of nine cases so far, including eight deaths. We expect more cases in the coming days as disease surveillance improves,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
At this point you will find additional external content. If you accept that cookies are placed by external providers and that personal data is thus transmitted to them, you must allow all cookies and display external content directly.
Allow cookiesMore info
Marburg causes a highly infectious hemorrhagic fever. It is transmitted by certain bats and belongs to the same family as the Ebola virus. Its mortality rate rises to almost 90%.
-First epidemic in 2023
The UN agency said it informed its member states on Monday of an “outbreak of suspected Marburg virus disease in the Kagera region”, located in northwestern Tanzania.
This region had already been the scene of a first outbreak in Marburg in March 2023, which lasted almost two months and resulted in 9 recorded cases including 6 deaths, according to the WHO.
The WHO also declared that the risk at the national level was “high” due to several worrying factors, notably citing the fact that “the source of the outbreak (is) currently unknown”.
Zone de transit
She added that the risk of spread at the regional level was also “high”, due to the “strategic location of Kagera”, a region through which Tanzanians transit on their way to “Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The announcement of this new epidemic comes less than a month after the WHO declared the end of an epidemic of Marburg fever in neighboring Rwanda, which lasted three months and left 15 dead.
“Latest news”
Want to stay on top of the news? “Tribune de Genève” offers you two meetings per day, directly in your email box. So you don’t miss anything that’s happening in your canton, in Switzerland or around the world.
Other newsletters
Log in
AFP
Did you find an error? Please report it to us.
0 comments
Related News :