Epidemiologist from Griffith University Australia Dicky Budiman said that the Marburg Virus has the potential to become a new pandemic that will hit the whole world in the future.
“Marburg virus is one of the viruses on the list of potentially pandemic viruses. Marburg virus disease is a very deadly disease that causes dengue fever, with a mortality ratio of more than 80 percent,” Dicky told ANTARA via text message in Jakarta, Wednesday.
Dicky said that the World Health Organization (WHO) had confirmed that an outbreak of the Marburg virus was occurring in Equatorial Guinea, Africa.
So far, WHO has found 10 people declared dead. More than 200 people are currently undergoing a quarantine period and restrictions on movement have been imposed by the local government.
Dicky said that all parties within the health authorities had been informed that there was a suspicious finding of a disease cluster by the district health officials there on Tuesday (7/2).
With the incident in Africa starting to get WHO attention, Dicky reminded that Marburg has a clinical spectrum that overlaps or is similar to the Ebola virus. Unfortunately, until now the vaccine is still in the development stage.
Marburg disease is transmitted by contact with body fluids or tissues of infected animals or humans. With an incubation period of two to 21 days. The sufferer feels a number of symptoms, namely fever, headache, muscle aches, and vomiting.
Marburg disease can even cause bleeding, multiple organ failure to death. Around the fifth day after the onset of symptoms, a rash may appear, which is most prominent on the abdomen, chest, back.
“However, currently there is no specific treatment for Marburg. Outbreaks are rare, relatively small, but very fatal, with case fatality rates ranging from 25 to 90 percent,” he said.
Therefore, Dicky suggested the Indonesian government, and even the world, to start implementing a one healthy approach (one health) so that all preventive management, starting from vaccine development, early detection to strengthening public health programs, is not too late to be implemented even though it requires a lot of money.
“Is this a potential pandemic? For now, I don’t think so, but in turn, sooner or later, if the control strategy is weak, vaccines and drugs are not available, the threat will be even greater for the world,” said Dicky.
As additional information, the Marburg Virus is a group of highly contagious and deadly filoviruses. Its properties are similar to the Ebola virus and was first discovered in 1967 in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany, and Belgrade, Serbia. It happened right after a severe outbreak of dengue fever among laboratory workers at the time.
Editor : Abdullah Rifai
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