Marburg virus is a haemorrhagic virus, which cause profuse bleeding and high fever with a death rate towards 90%.
The present outbreak in the northern part of Angola around the town of Uige has so far caused 181 deaths (8 April 2005) including 15 nurses and 2 doctors from the regional hospital in Uige. According to Médicins sans Frontiere in the area, the regional hospital has been a main centre for spreading the virus, and MSF has proposed the hospital to be closed during the outbreak.
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Uige has approximately 200,000 inhabitants and has also been the center of a large outbreak of sleeping sickness which has been going on over at least the past five years.
Marburg virus has been named after the German city of Marburg, where a consignment of monkeys for research introduced the virus, which killed several laboratory staff more than thirty years ago. The clinical picture with profuse bleeding and high fever and the high death rate makes Marburg virus as dangerous as Ebola and Lassa virus.
It is uncertain how humans get infected, but monkeys are a delicatesse and hunting and eating monkeys may be a mode of transmission. Patients excrete virus in high numbers in all sorts of body fluids and in the later stage of the disease with profuse bleedings containing high levels of virus, the risk of infection to other patients and nursing staff is very high.
