August 10, 2007 – In response to a request by the Ugandan Ministry of Health, the HHS Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has dispatched a team of four experts to help with the investigation and control of an outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever. At the same time, laboratory testing of samples is continuing at the HHS/CDC laboratory in Atlanta.
The Ugandan Ministry of Health has reported two suspected cases of Marburg fever in workers from a privately owned gold mine in Kamwenge District, near the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo; one patient survived, and the second died. Samples sent to HHS/CDC confirmed Marburg disease in the first index patient, and results from the second are pending. No new human cases have been reported since the two index cases, over two weeks ago. If no additional cases are reported within 21 days of the beginning of the outbreak, the assumed incubation period for Marburg fever, authorities will declare the episode over. The Ugandan Ministry of Health has set up a national task force, which includes resident World Health Organization and HHS/CDC experts, to respond to the outbreak.
Marburg, an Ebola-like RNA virus of the filovirus family, has not been reported in Uganda since the first cases in 1977, but Uganda suffered an outbreak of Ebola in the year 2000 that killed over 100 patients. The Ugandan authorities have won praise for employing the experience from that Ebola outbreak to respond appropriately to this recent emergence of Marburg. In 2005, HHS participated in the control of a serious Marburg fever outbreak in Uíge Province in the Republic of Angola that claimed over 200 lives. As with the Ebola virus, the actual animal host for Marburg virus remains a mystery.
