Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — The detection of the first two cases of highly contagious Marburg virus disease in Ghana has raised global concerns.
Ghana had confirmed its first two cases of highly contagious Marburg virus disease, according to what the World Health Organization (WHO) announced in a statement on Sunday.
This comes following it was confirmed that two unrelated patients, who later died, were infected in the Ashanti region of southern Ghana.
Here is the most important information regarding Marburg virus, its transmission, symptoms and treatment, according to the World Health Organization:
- Marburg virus is a highly contagious viral hemorrhagic fever that belongs to the same family as the known Ebola virus disease.
- This is only the second time that an animal disease has been detected in West Africa.
- Illness caused by Marburg virus begins suddenly with a high fever, severe headache, and severe malaise. Among its common symptoms are muscle aches and pains.
- The patient usually presents with a high fever on the first day of infection, followed by gradual and rapid weakness. On regarding the third day, the patient develops severe watery diarrhea, pain, abdominal cramps, nausea, and vomiting. Diarrhea can last up to a week. And it was said that the patient shows, at this stage, features resembling “ghost features”.
- Many patients present with severe bleeding symptoms between the fifth and seventh days
- Fatal cases are usually characterized by some form of bleeding from several sites. Fresh blood is observed in vomit and stool, and often, bleeding from the nose, gums, and vagina.
- The virus is transmitted between humans through close contact with an infected person.
- The virus does not spread between humans during its incubation period.
- A person becomes infected by coming into contact with the patient’s blood or other body fluids (faeces, vomit, urine, saliva, and respiratory secretions) that contain the virus in high concentrations.
- The virus can spread through the semen, as the virus was discovered in the semen of infected people following their clinical recovery from the disease, with a period of seven weeks.
- The ability of infected people to transmit infection increases as the disease progresses, and this ability reaches its peak during the severe disease stage.
- Close contact with infected people, when caring for them at home or in hospital, and some burial practices, are common pathways of infection.
- There is no vaccine or specific treatment to combat this virus.
- Supportive care — such as rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids — and treatment of certain symptoms improves chances of survival.
- Marburg virus is transmitted to people by fruit bats
