In Uganda, successive outbreaks of two viral haemorrhagic fevers this year—Marburg and Ebola—have killed at least 26 people and stretched the financial resources of the government and its supporting partners. Even as Ugandan officials scramble for funds, an international team of specialists is working to contain the ongoing Marburg outbreak.
Officially declared on Oct 19, at least nine people have died in the Marburg outbreak, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). WHO has reported 18 cases in total. With no known cure for the virus, teams have fanned out across five districts to identify contacts and isolate potential patients before they transmit the virus.
Health workers were monitoring more than 130 people across the country who came into contact with infected patients. “One important point for us to control an outbreak is to identify the chain of transmission among identified people”, said Michel van Herp, a specialist in viral haemorrhagic fevers working for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). And “if the contact develops a fever, to get him as soon as possible to the isolation ward.”
The recent Marburg diagnosis came less than 3 weeks after the country was confirmed free of Ebola. While Marburg and Ebola fall in the same family of filoviruses, the two outbreaks are not linked. The Ebola outbreak, which started in late July in western Uganda's Kibaale district, killed 17 people, according to WHO. By tracking contacts and quarantining patients, an international team that included Uganda's Ministry of Health, WHO, and MSF, was able to contain the spread of the virus.
Now representatives from those same organisations are back on the ground, this time in the country's southwest, where the Marburg outbreak is centred. Investigators have tracked the origin of the outbreak to Ibanda district—the same area that hosted a smaller Marburg outbreak in 2007. In the earlier incident, the CDC identified fruit bats sheltering in nearby mines as reservoirs for the virus.
Because the Marburg outbreak came so quickly after Ebola, “we were able to retrieve most of the experts we had working on Ebola”, said Rukia Nakamatte Mbaziira, the ministry of health's communication officer. And leftover supplies were quickly transferred from Kibaale to the site of the new outbreak.