Marburg disease: Sample from remote Tanzanian region tests positive – National

from Tanzania president said on Monday that one sample from a remote part of northern Tanzania tested positive for Marburg diseasewhich is caused by a highly contagious virus that can be fatal in up to 88 percent of cases without treatment.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan spoke in Dodoma, the capital, next door world health organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

WHO was the first to report a suspected outbreak of Marburg that had killed eight people in Tanzania’s Kagera region on January 14. Tanzanian health officials disputed the report hours later, saying tests on samples had returned negative results.

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Hassan said Monday that further tests have confirmed a case of Marburg. Twenty-five other samples were negative, she said.

As of Ebolathe Marburger virus originates in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with the body fluids of infected persons or with surfaces, such as contaminated bed sheets.

Symptoms include fever, muscle pain, diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases death from extreme blood loss. There is no authorized vaccine or treatment for Marburg.

This is the second outbreak of Marburg in Kagera since 2023. It comes just a month after Rwanda, which shares a border with Kagera, declared that its own outbreak of the disease was over.

Rwandan officials reported a total of 15 deaths and 66 cases in the outbreak first declared on September 27, with the majority of those affected being health care workers who treated the first patients.