42 days without anybody testing positive. Ghana has declared that the recent outbreak of the Marburg virus is now over.
Marburg is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola.
The virus is initially transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads among humans through contact with the bodily fluids of infected people, according to the WHO.
Ghana confirmed the country’s first outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus and alerted the public of the outbreak of the highly infectious disease in July 2022.
The country recorded two fatalities after three people contracted the virus, a father and his 14-month-old child died as a result of the marburg virus. The third person - the mother - recovered and last tested positive in August.
The three infected persons had come in contact with almost 200 people but none of them had developed any symptoms.
"Ghana is safe," Ghana Health Service Director General Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye told journalists in Accra on Friday.
He went on to thank the World Health Organization and other partners who helped the country deal with the outbreak.
According to a statement by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Ghana’s ministry of health declared the outbreak’s end on Friday after no new cases were reported over the past 42 days, or two incubation periods — the time between infection and the onset of symptoms.
Commenting on the development, Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, said Ghana’s response was rapid and robust despite having no previous experience with the disease.
“Lives have been saved and people’s health protected thanks to an effective disease detection system that helped to quickly identify the virus and enabled prompt response to curb the spread of infection,” she added
"Despite having no previous experience with the disease, Ghana's response has been rapid and robust," the AFP news agency quotes WHO Africa head Dr Matshidiso Moeti as saying.
This was the second time that Marburg virus has been identified in West Africa, the first being in Guinea.
Guinea experienced a single case of the virus infection, the country declared an end to the outbreak in September, five weeks after the virus was dictated.
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