Geneva: At least four people emerged as a contact of a man who died in Guinea from the Marburg virus like Ebola, said the World Health Organization Tuesday, when the staff was deployed in the West African country to help the authority prevent the outbreak.
Who spokesman Fadela Chaib said this case was first reported on Monday night, the first number in West Africa.
The case appeared in Gueckedou, close to Guinea’s border with Sierra Leone and Liberia, an area hit by an Ebola outbreak between 2014 and 2016 which killed at least 11,325 people.
Chaib said the authorities worked to track the man’s contact, who had visited health facilities before he died.
The four were tested for Marburg and officials were waiting for the results.
“At least four people he came into contact with asymptomatic.
So they did not show his illness,” he said.
“But 10 staff who are in the community to conduct contacts – and also to help the authorities.” Chaib says “good news” is that who already has a team in the region because they have done the Ebola outbreak that has just ended.
The Marburg Virus belongs to the same family as Ebola, and previously the outbreak has erupted elsewhere in Africa in Angola, Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.
Symptoms of Marburg include high fever and muscle aches, and some patients are then bleeding through the body’s openings such as the eyes and ears.
There is no drug or vaccine approved for Marburg, but the rehydration and other supportive treatments can increase the chances of patients to survive.