1 month ago
Channels Television
Nine people have died in Equatorial Guinea from an “outbreak” of the Marburg virus, which causes a hemorrhagic fever nearly as deadly as Ebola, the health minister said Monday, announcing that a province had been placed in quarantine. It is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes the Ebola virus, which has wreaked havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa. The natural host of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, which carry the virus but do not fall sick from it. There have been previous outbreaks and sporadic cases in other parts of Africa — in Angola, DR Congo, Guinea, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. Gabon and Cameroon had already implemented testing and border controls or restrictions in some areas after Equatorial Guinea announced the suspected Marburg cases.
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