Senior Research Fellow at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana, Peter Kojo Quarshie has described the Marburg virus as a rare virus yet more deadly compared to other infectious viruses recorded in Ghana and the African continent at large.
In an interview with eTV’s Samuel Eshun on the “Fact Sheet” show, the Molecular Virology Specialist explained the Marburg virus can be categorized as a filler virus originating from the Ebola virus family.
According to him, it’s not very often an outbreak of the Marburg virus is recorded among the human population. However, when they do, its effects are very dire and difficult to recover from.
“Marburg virus is a filler virus and in the same family as Ebola. It causes what we call the virus hemorrhagic fever. It means you’re going to have a lot of internal bleeding and a rare virus. Compared to Ebola it doesn’t tend to cause human outbreaks but when it does it’s quite deadly and we do see a lot of these manifestation,” he said.
He added that similar to the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus is more prevalent in bats and only spreads to people when there is contact with these animals.
“Evidence suggests that it resides in bats or other bush animals but mostly bats. When the chance come together that humans and these bats are in the same vicinity or from eating contaminated or something then you have this cross over into the human population,” he noted.
The Ghana Health Service has confirmed the first cases of the Marburg Virus Disease after a World Health Organisation (WHO) collaborating centre laboratory in Senegal confirmed earlier results after two people who later died tested positive for the virus earlier this month.
It is only the second time the zoonotic disease has been detected in West Africa. Guinea confirmed a single case in an outbreak that was declared over on September 16, 2021, five weeks after the initial case was detected.
Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda are among the African nations where Marburg outbreaks and isolated cases have been documented in the past. The WHO has issued a notice for neighbouring high-risk nations.
