Written in WORLD he
World Health Organization (OMS) called an emergency meeting of their experts to discuss the current outbreak of marburg virus in Equatorial Guineawith at least nine deaths and 16 suspected cases.
The meeting will also analyze the current situation of vaccine research against virus similar to Ebola: although there are around thirty candidates, they are all undergoing clinical testing and none have yet been approved.
First confirmed outbreak
Equatorial Guinea confirmed on Monday its first outbreak of the disease marburg virus in the province of Kié-Ntem, in the west of the continental part of the African country and bordering Cameroon and Gabon.
He marburg virus It causes a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever from the same family as the more well-known Ebola virus disease.
In the past, outbreaks and sporadic cases of this disease have been detected in other African countries such as Ghana, Guinea, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.
Marburg virus causes more than 3 thousand deaths
The disease is as deadly as Ebola and is estimated to have killed more than 3,500 people in Africa.
He marburg virusfor which there is no vaccine or specific treatment, was detected in 1967 in the German city of Marburg -origin of its name- by laboratory technicians who were infected while investigating monkeys betrayed from Uganda.
