Marburg Virus: Causes, Symptoms, & Cure

What is

Marburg virus disease?

It is a highly contagious hemorrhagic illness that is passed from person to person directly through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people and surfaces, fruit bats and is in the same family as Ebola. The virus needs two to twenty-one days to develop.

What are the causes of Marburg?

Transmission from animals to humans:

According to experts, the Marburg virus may have entered humans through the bodily fluids of an infected animal. Examples of this:

Blood. The viruses can be spread by killing or eating infected animals. The virus has also infected researchers who have operated on infected animals for their studies.

Waste products. The Marburg virus has infected tourists in several African caves as well as some underground mine employees, probably by contact with the bats’ waste products or urine.

Transmission from person to person:

Usually, a person with the Marburg virus doesn’t become contagious until they start to exhibit symptoms. Blood, bodily fluids, or infected objects like contaminated bedding, clothing, or needles can all spread the infections. As they tend to ill family members or prepare the dead for burial, family members are susceptible to infection.

If medical professionals don’t wear specialist personal protection equipment that protects them from head to toe, they risk contracting an infection.

There is no proof that insect bites can spread the Marburg virus.

What are the symptoms of Marburg?

A high fever, a severe headache, and a severe malaise accompanied by muscle aches and pains are some of the typical symptoms of the sickness. Severe watery diarrhoea, abdominal pain and cramping, nausea, and vomiting usually start on the third day after contracting the virus and remain for a week.

In documented cases that have led to fatalities, symptoms including bleeding, frequently from multiple areas, including vomit and faeces, have also been described. Sometimes these symptoms are followed by bleeding from the nose, mouth, and vagina.

The two suspected patients in Ghana had diarrhoea, fever, nausea, and vomiting before they died in the hospital.

What is the fatality rate of the disease?

Marburg may prove to be extremely harmful and fatal: Case death rates in earlier outbreaks have varied from 24 to 88 per cent.

How does it spread?

The Marburg virus is believed to have its natural hosts among Rousettus aegyptiacus fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family. Fruit bats spread the Marburg virus from one person to another, where it subsequently spreads to further people. In order to effectively control outbreaks, community involvement is crucial.

What is the cure?

There is currently neither a cure nor a vaccine for Marburg. Rehydrating patients with oral or intravenous fluids may be beneficial.

According to the WHO’s statement from the previous year, it might be difficult to clinically identify Marburg virus illness from other infectious diseases such as malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, and meningitis.