Kenya alert as Tanzania confirms outbreak of Marburg
By Xinhua News Agency, March 23, 2023Tanzania today confirmed its first-ever cases of Marburg Virus Disease after laboratory tests were carried out following reports of cases and deaths in the country’s north-west Kagera region.
Tanzania’s National Public Health Laboratory analysed samples to determine the cause of illness after eight people developed symptoms including fever, vomiting, bleeding and renal failure. Five of the eight cases, including a health worker, have died and the remaining three are receiving treatment. A total of 161 contacts have been identified and being monitored.
“The efforts by Tanzania’s health authorities to establish the cause of the disease is a clear indication of the determination to effectively respond to the outbreak. We are working with the government to rapidly scale up control measures to halt the spread of the virus and end the outbreak as soon as possible,” said Dr Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Director for Africa.
WHO is supporting the Ministry of Health to deploy an emergency team to Kagera to carry out further epidemiological investigations. The emergency team will focus on active case finding in the community and local health care facilities to identify more contacts and provide them with appropriate care.
While Tanzania has never previously recorded a Marburg case, it has had to respond to other health emergencies including Covid-19, cholera and dengue within the past three years. A strategic risk assessment conducted by WHO in September 2022 showed that the country is at high to very high risk for infectious diseases outbreaks.
“The lessons learnt, and progress made during other recent outbreaks should stand the country in good stead as it confronts this latest challenge,” said Dr Moeti.