After confirming the first two deaths, Ghana recognized the first Marburg epidemic in its history: an epidemic of almost a hundred people. This Ebola-related hemorrhagic fever has mortality rates between 24% and 88%, depending on the epidemic, virus strain, and case management.

However, it was never of particular concern as outbreaks were limited and sporadic: therefore we have no treatment or vaccine. But the spread of the virus in recent years has made international officials wonder what’s going on.

What is Marburg virus?. In 1967, there were rare simultaneous outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever in three laboratories in three European cities, Marburg, Frankfurt and Belgrade. For days, the illness began suddenly with fever, headache, and general myalgia, but immediately led to heavy bleeding. Eventually the virus (a filovirus from the Ebola family) was identified, and the outbreaks were linked to a group of African green monkeys from Uganda (with whom they worked in the lab).

Since then, outbreaks have been confined to Africa. Especially to Angola, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa. In general, we are lucky with Marburg: not only that, to get it from bats, open lesions, direct contact with blood or bodily fluids are required; animal-borne cases tend to have a slower evolution and relatively low lethality. The problem is, the virus gains momentum and virulence as it spreads from person to person from there.

Speed, speed and speed. And in this sense, “health officials [ghanesas] They responded quickly, anticipating the preparation of a possible outbreak. “This is good because without urgent and decisive action, the Marburg virus could easily spiral out of control,” he said.

What is a virus like you doing in a place like this? The good news ends here because the virus reaching Ghana raises questions we’re not sure we can answer. There is no doubt that all Ebola-related hemorrhagic fevers (including Lloviu’s Spanish cousin) have attracted media attention because they are fatal: but unlike viruses such as SARS-CoV-2, they have a very low transmission capacity. That is our main asset against them.

The problem is, with its emergence in Ghana, experts are starting to wonder what the dynamics (natural or not) were that brought the virus to this West African country. Not because it’s strange (between 1980 and 2010, the number of annual epidemics of infectious disease worldwide tripled, and the diseases they cause nearly doubled), but because of what it could tell us about the future.

As Stephen Morse previously wrote, there are key factors that cause infectious diseases to emerge globally: environmental changes (from the evolution of farming and livestock practices, changes in aquatic ecosystems, deforestation or climate change) humans, travel and trade.

Where are we going? What does the extremely rapid spread of Zika tell us, the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome epidemic in the southwestern United States in 1993, or the cholera epidemic in Haiti in 2010 after the earthquake? What does the growth of diseases like Argentine hemorrhagic fever (or stubble), schistosomiasis, or Rift Valley fever tell us? What does the Marburg epidemic in Ghana tell us? This is the big question we have to answer because they contain the essential elements of the ‘Pandemic Age’ we live in.

Image | WHO