Marburg virus: Cameroon discovers suspected cases of disease similar to Ebola

CNN
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Cameroonian authorities detected two suspected cases of Marburg disease in Olamze, a border town with Equatorial Guinea, on Monday, the region’s public health delegate, Robert Mathurin Bidjang, said on Tuesday.

Equatorial Guinea has officially declared its first outbreak Marburg virus, a disease similar to Ebola, on Monday.

Neighboring Cameroon had restricted movement along the border to avoid contagion following reports of an unknown fatal haemorrhagic fever in Equatorial Guinea last week.

“On February 13, we had two suspected cases. They are two 16-year-old children, a boy and a girl, who have no history of travel to the affected areas in Equatorial Guinea,” Bidjang said during a meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital.

Forty-two people who came into contact with the two children have been identified and contact tracing is underway, he added.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said earlier on Tuesday that it was strengthening its epidemiological surveillance in Equatorial Guinea.

The small central African country has so far reported nine deaths as well as 16 suspected cases of Marburg virus disease, with symptoms including fever, fatigue, blood-stained vomiting and diarrhoea, according to the WHO.

“Field surveillance has been intensified,” said George Ameh, WHO country representative in Equatorial Guinea.

“Contact tracing, as you know, is the cornerstone of the response. We have… redeployed the COVID-19 teams that were there for contact tracing and quickly upgraded them to really help us.

Equatorial Guinea quarantined more than 200 people and restricted movement last week in its province of Kie-Ntem, where hemorrhagic fever was first detected.

Marburg virus is a highly contagious disease that can have a mortality rate of up to 88%, according to the WHO. There is no approved vaccine or antiviral therapy to treat it.

“We are working on a 30-day response plan where we should be able to quantify what the exact measures are and quantify what the exact needs are,” Ameh said.

He added that authorities in the country had not reported any new suspected cases in the past 48 hours.