Deadly Marburg hemorrhagic fever breaks out in Uganda

Uganda is grappling to contain the deadly Marburg hemorrhagic fever after confirmatory laboratory tests turned positive.

The outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic fever which was announced here on Sunday by Elioda Tumwesigye, the minister of state for health, has left one person, the index case dead, one person in isolation and over 80 others being monitored both in central and western Uganda.

According to the WHO, Marburg is a severe and highly fatal disease caused by a virus from the same family as the one that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever.

Case fatality rates have varied greatly, from 25 percent in the initial laboratory-associated outbreak in 1967, to more than 80 percent in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1998-2000, to even high

Deadly Marburg hemorrhagic fever breaks out in Uganda

The original case was reported on October 5th it looks like. He actually died September 28th This virus is of the same family as Ebola and it appears just as deadly with the same symptoms.

Here is another story about it.

Marburg hemorrhagic fever, like Ebola, is an acute infectious viral disease because it belongs to the same family.

The disease which is believed to be spread by monkeys and bats is transmitted through direct contact with blood, secretions, and other body fluids of infected persons or animals. Armed with the results, the National Taskforce kicked up its public awareness campaign urging the public to report any suspected cases. Isolation units at major hospitals across the country were readied for the worst.

Public awareness:

When a few days later the country celebrated its Independence Day anniversary on Oct.9, President Yoweri Museveni said he would not be shaking hands with any of the visiting dignitaries because of Marburg. That weekend, clerics in mosques, churches, and temples across the country cancelled the handshaking rituals and cautioned their followers to be on the lookout for Marburg.

Source.

So it seems we now have two strains of deadly virus popping up at about the same time. The man who contracted it and died was a male radiographer at Mengo Hospital in the capital city, Kampala. It would seem to me that he probably contracted it from a patient and that patient zero was probably released.

This is not an "outbreak" if its just one or two cases. Thats called a micro break.

The current outbreak in West Africa is Ebola Zaire. Anyone care to elaborate on this sudden appearance of Ebola Marburg?

originally posted by: intrptr
Anyone care to elaborate on this sudden appearance of Ebola Marburg?

It not Ebola Marburg just marburg as they are separate species. Its only the symptoms and death rates that are the same.

a reply to: intrptr


I was going to go on and on about all the other more dangerous virus that live in the ether and did a google for the most dangerous virus know to man.... Returned number one as Marburg lol.... So much for the "bigger things to worry about" argument lol.

What exactly makes this one worse then Zaire? From what I'm seeing they have the same result just cousins in the virus world? Am I right?

a reply to: crazyewok

Yes. But Marburg, like Ebola, is a member of the Filoviridae family of viruses.

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: crazyewok

Yes. But Marburg, like Ebola, is a member of the Filoviridae family of viruses.

Yes FAMILY

But I wasn't talking about family was I if you read my post? I was correcting the mistake of another poster who claim Marburg was Ebola-Marburg.

I made no error

a reply to: crazyewok

Didn't mean to imply error, just expanding after intrptr called it "Ebola Marburg."

The weird thing is that we know that Marburg was studied for weaponization.

The Soviet Union had an extensive offensive and defensive biological weapons program that included MARV.[51] At least three Soviet research institutes had MARV research programs during offensive times: the Virology Center of the Scientific-Research Institute for Microbiology in Zagorsk (today Sergiev Posad), the Scientific-Production Association "Vektor" (today the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology "Vektor") in Koltsovo, and the Irkutsk Scientific-Research Anti-Plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East in Irkutsk. As most performed research was highly classified, it remains unclear how successful the MARV program was. However, Soviet defector Ken Alibek claimed that a weapon filled with MARV was tested at the Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental and Production Base in Stepnogorsk, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (today Kazakhstan),[51] suggesting that the development of a MARV biological weapon had reached advanced stages. Independent confirmation for this claim is lacking. At least one laboratory accident with MARV, resulting in the death of Koltsovo researcher Nikolai Ustinov, occurred during offensive times in the Soviet Union and was first described in detail by Alibek.[51] After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, MARV research continued in all three institutes.

Source

Also it looks like the first outbreak in Uganda occurred in close proximity to the floods of 2007.

a reply to: mindseye1609

What exactly makes this one worse then Zaire? From what I'm seeing they have the same result just cousins in the virus world? Am I right?

I thought they were but apparently thats been changed somewhat…

The genera Ebolavirus and Marburgvirus were originally classified as the species of the now-obsolete Filovirus genus. In March, 1998, the Vertebrate Virus Subcommittee proposed in the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) to change the Filovirus genus to the Filoviridae family with two specific genera: Ebola-like viruses and Marburg-like viruses.

Wiki

They both eat you the same, though.

originally posted by: intrptr
This is not an "outbreak" if its just one or two cases. Thats called a micro break.

The current outbreak in West Africa is Ebola Zaire. Anyone care to elaborate on this sudden appearance of Ebola Marburg?

Correct... those sorts of micro outbreaks happen quite often in Africa.. my only concern would be that if resources are strained it could spread.. I think it's unlikely though... besides it's really in the same family as Ebola..

a reply to: K_OS

Interesting kind of make you wonder if ebola is actually a variation of marlburg and not the other way around.

a reply to: intrptr

Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!! very similar but separated, kind of make you wonder also if marlburg is the original virus and ebola just the one that gets to be more easily spread.

a reply to: miniatus

That is the way that is seems to be since ebola made it into infecting humans back in the 79 "by mistake".

Again kind of make you go hum.

a reply to: marg6043

I have little doubt this Ebola epidemic started out of Kenema Hospital in Sierra Leone, from the lab operated by USAMRIID and the rest of the VHFC. But I also know our world is chock-full of dangerous diseases that are going through a period of accelerated evolution caused by human industrial activities and products. Focusing on bio-weapons exclusively just protects global corporations' interests by dismissing the effects of their delinquent profiteering.

Welp. That's it then. Taxed with Ebola it looks like the S just HTF for west Africa. Also, this one is airborne iirc. Countdown until it hits US soil starts now.

a reply to: soficrow

That is why sofi, I don't stop saying that the main three virus of our modern times came from the same virus family but were tampering with to made what we have today.

I know I will like to research on this, but people are not interested to find out.

I know something is not right about ebola in the US but things are to get more clear once the mid term elections are over and the political hag is out of it.

This is interesting, I find out in my research that while ebola now is considered to have 90% of deadly rates, Marburg is considered to ne 100% deadly, meaning either all the people that have contacted malburg doesn't live of is not enough infected to really rate it

a reply to: miniatus

I think it's unlikely though… besides it's really in the same family as Ebola..

In The Hot Zone, the source for both was in proximity to Kittum cave. What I understand from that narrative is that Marburg was named after the town the boy was from in Germany, I think.

The other man made love to his woman apparently outside the mouth of the cave. I don't know where the boy was in proximity to the cave.

Synchronicity? Or planned depopulation by some unknown ancient protocols?

(insert Twilight Zone theme)

a reply to: intrptr

Hey thanks for that bit of information, if we did long and hard enough we could gather how Marburg came to be, specially the cross species infection, like ebola, that seems to have crossed into humans just in the last 30 years or so.

But the question nobody can answer is from where it came from and not bats were not their natural host just a carrier.

originally posted by: marg6043
a reply to: intrptr

Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!! very similar but separated, kind of make you wonder also if marlburg is the original virus and ebola just the one that gets to be more easily spread.

From what I understood from the book each time Ebola rears its head the strain is slightly different genetically. So they name it based on where it broke, Marburg Germany, Zaire Congo, Reston Virginia and so on. Each is unique to the bug collectors with their horror freezers in the basement and they all eagerly seek samples of each new variant.