Tanzania Confirms New Outbreak Of Marburg Virus

Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan confirmed on Monday that there was a new outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the East African country.

One "confirmed case of Marburg virus marks the second outbreak" in Tanzania since 2023, the president told a press briefing broadcast from the capital Dodoma.

Last week, the World Health Organization said that a suspected Marburg outbreak in Tanzania had killed eight people, assessing the risk at the national level as "high".

That report has not been confirmed by Tanzania.

Instead, Hassan said that authorities had "identified one patient (who) has been infected with Marburg virus".

"The cause of the earlier reported deaths in the community has not been confirmed and efforts are ongoing to ascertain the source of the infection," she added.

A total of 26 suspected cases have been tested and only one came back positive, she said.

The case was recorded in the northwestern Kagera region, which borders Uganda and Rwanda.

Kagera was the site of the country's first Marburg outbreak in March 2023, which lasted for nearly two months and involved nine cases including six deaths, the WHO said.

"We have demonstrated in the past our ability to contain similar outbreaks and are determined to do the same this time around," Hassan said.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, visiting Dodoma, pledged the UN agency's "continued support to bringing the outbreak under control".

"Since the first suspected cases of Marburg were reported earlier, Tanzania has scaled up its response by enhancing case detection, setting up treatment centres and a mobile laboratory for testing samples, and deploying national response teams," he said in a statement.

"Considering the low global risk, and the strong capabilities of the Tanzanian government, WHO advises against restrictions on trade and travel to the country."

The latest case in Tanzania comes a month after WHO declared the end of a three-month Marburg outbreak in neighbouring Rwanda, which killed 15 people.

Marburg causes a highly infectious haemorrhagic fever. It is transmitted from fruit bats and belongs to the same family of viruses as Ebola.

With a fatality rate that can reach close to 90 percent, Marburg's fever is often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.

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