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.
The government had announced last week that it was investigating the cause of suspect cases of hemorrhagic fever in a densely forested eastern region near the borders of Gabon and Cameroon on Africa’s central western coast, but said only three people had shown “light symptoms”.
Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba told a press conference that a health alert had been declared in Kie-Ntem province and the neighbouring district of Mongomo, with a “lockdown plan implemented” after consulting with the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
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.
The government had announced last week that it was investigating the cause of suspect cases of hemorrhagic fever in a densely forested eastern region near the borders of Gabon and Cameroon on Africa’s central western coast, but said only three people had shown “light symptoms”.
Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba told a press conference that a health alert had been declared in Kie-Ntem province and the neighbouring district of Mongomo, with a “lockdown plan implemented” after consulting with the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
High alert
The WHO said in a statement Monday that in addition to the nine deaths, 16 other people in Kie-Ntem had shown suspect symptoms including fever and vomiting blood.
It marks the first Marburg outbreak in the central African country, though it noted previous outbreaks and sporadic cases in other parts of Africa, including in Angola, DR Congo, Guinea, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.
Last July, Ghana had reported two Marburg deaths for the first time, in what were also the first cases in West Africa. Authorities declared an end to the outbreak in September.
There have been previous outbreaks and sporadic cases in other parts of Africa — in Angola, DR Congo, Guinea, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.
The virus takes between two and 21 days to incubate, leading to abrupt symptoms of high fever, headaches, muscular pain, vomiting and diarrhoea — symptoms that can make Marburg difficult to diagnose initially, as they are similar to typhoid and malaria.
The WHO said it had dispatched specialised teams to support local authorities in Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich state led since 1979 by the authoritarian President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
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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