Ghana, Declares The Marburg Virus Outbreak Over

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.

Comments

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Wins Big In Governor Nyesom Wike's Local Government Area

The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, has won the Obio-Akpor, the Local Government Area of Governor Nyesom Wike in Rivers State by a landslide. Tinubu polled 80,239 votes to defeat the Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, who came a distant second with 3,829 and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who got 368 votes.

North Korea Confirms First COVID Outbreak

North Korea has confirmed its first COVID-19 death, and says hundreds of thousands of people have “fever”, in the first indication of the scale of the outbreak in its largely unvaccinated population. The nuclear-armed country announced on Thursday its first coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began, moving into lockdown after it said people in the capital, Pyongyang, tested positive for the Omicron variant. “A fever whose cause couldn’t be identified explosively spread nationwide from late April,” the official Korean Central News Agency said on Friday. “Six persons died (one of them tested positive for the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron),” it added. About 350,000 people have shown signs of “fever”, while 187,800 people are being treated in isolation, according to KCNA. Experts worry North Korea’s health system will be unable to cope with spread of COVID in an unvaccinated population, they also believe the virus has been present in the country for some time, the authorities only a...

A Total Reversal, Reverse Electricity Tariff Cut Now, Demand Nigerians

On Monday, Nigerians are demanding a total reversal of electricity tariff cut - the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s reduction of the tariff payable by Band A customers from N225/kWh to N206.8/kWh. Organised labour, the Nigerian Bar Association and the House of Representatives, have also rejected the hike in tariff payable by about 1.9 million consumers. Subsidy on electricity was withdrawn completely from the tariff of consumers in the Band A category, which constitutes about 15 per cent of the total 12.82 million power consumers across the country. The Federal Government said it would save N1.5tn, as a result of the tariff hike, adding that Band A customers would enjoy up to 20 hours of power supply daily. The government took the decision which became effective on April 3, 2024. Organised labour has however issued a two-week ultimatum demanding the reversal of the tariff hike. The House of Representatives has called on the NERC to suspend forthwith the implementation of t...

Welcome To Echo Blog

Search This Blog