United States: Tanzania’s president announced on Monday that laboratory results of one sample from the distant northern region showed positive results that had Marburg disease, which has a fatality rate up to 88% with no treatment available.
More about the news
World Health Organization leader Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus joined President Samia Suluhu Hassan in a public address from Dodoma.
WHO announced on January 14 the discovery of suspected Marburg cases that caused eight deaths in the Kagera region of Tanzania.
The health ministry in Tanzania rejected the report just hours after releasing test results showing no signs of the virus, US News reported.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Monday confirmed the country’s second outbreak of Marburg virus disease (MVD) in two years.
— IGIHE (@IGIHE) January 21, 2025
Speaking at a joint news conference with World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Hassan said that… pic.twitter.com/1PPreumrxJ
However, Hassan announced on Monday that laboratory tests revealed one person tested positive for Marburg. Health officials tested 26 samples and found no evidence of the virus in 25 of them.
Just like Ebola, the Marburg virus appears first in fruit bats and spreads across humans when people meet infected bodily fluids or clean surfaces like infected bed linens.
Symptoms of the disease
A person develops a high fever alongside muscle aches, then progresses to diarrhea and vomiting before dying from critical blood loss. No one has created an approved treatment or vaccine to fight the Marburg virus.
Kagera region has experienced two Marburg outbreaks since we began tracking in 2023, US News reported.
Tanzania Confirms Outbreak Of #Marburg Virus Diseasehttps://t.co/VRF3ypJvia
— Healthnika (@healthnika) January 21, 2025
The discovery came one month to the day after Rwanda confirmed its final Marburg case along its shared border: Kagera.
During the initial Marburg outbreak in Rwanda that started September 27, health workers bore the highest risk as 66 patients tested positive and suffered most of the 15 fatalities.