There has been an epidemic outbreak of Marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea for the first time. Here’s what you need to know about the virus, and how it spreads.
This image shows Ebola virus particles (red) budding from the surface of kidney cell (blue).
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/Flickr
Kevin Zeng, U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases
Although treatments for Ebola have helped many people overcome this deadly disease, the virus can persist in the brain and cause a lethal relapse.
A photo taken in August 2015 of disinfected gloves and boots at an Ebola treatment centre in Conakry, Guinea. Lessons are being drawn to manage the Marburg virus.
Cellou Binani/AFP via Getty Images
Many African countries are experienced in managing outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic fevers and many of the lessons learnt from the Ebola can be applied to the Marburg outbreak.
GPS devices on 20 bats in a Ugandan cave in 2018 as part of a research project to determine flight patterns and how they transmit Marburg virus to humans.
Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images
The Marburg virus will be present wherever the Egyptian Rousette bat occurs.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari shows his COVID-19 certificate after receiving his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in March 2021.
Photo by Kola Sulaimon / AFP via Getty Images
Experts assess Nigeria’s response to COVID-19 so far and express worry that the country does not appear to have learnt much; it isn’t prepared for the next pandemic.
The COVID-19 new normal might be here for quite some time.
SolStock/E+ via Getty Images
As ready as you are to be done with COVID-19, it’s not going anywhere soon. A historian of disease describes how once a pathogen emerges, it’s usually here to stay.
Before a vaccine is available to teach your immune system to ward off the coronavirus, maybe you can directly use molecules that have already fought it in other people.
U.S. officials risk public health by equating COVID-19 with places far from home.
AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Emphasizing foreign origins of a disease can have racist connotations and implications for how people understand their own risk of disease.
Medical workers in health crisis zones need access to research evidence to inform decisions. Above, workers at a temporary hospital for COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, China on Feb. 21, 2020.
Chinatopix via AP, File
In a health crisis, decisions about treatment and containment must be made quickly. It’s crucial those decisions be based on research evidence, but fast and easy access is not always available.
The virus that causes COVID-19 seems able to spread to anyone, anywhere.
NIAID/Flickr
While identifying a new disease by its place of origin seems intuitive, history shows that doing so can have serious consequences for the people that live there.
The current outbreak refuses to give in to efforts by an international team of health care workers, armed with vaccines and treatment that did not even exist during previous episodes.
A health worker spreading disinfectant at a health checkpoint in Goma, DRC.
Patricia Martinez/EPA-EFE
Nearly everything known about Ebola virus persistence in the reproductive system has resulted from testing semen of West African Ebola virus disease survivors.
An Ebola treatment centre in North Kivu where the outbreak’s epicentre is.
Flickr/MONUSCO Photos
Janusz Paweska, National Institute for Communicable Diseases
Borders are porous between North Kivu province of the DRC and neighbouring countries, so the potential for spread is highly likely.
Health workers from Bwera hospital prepare to transport the body of a fifty-year-old woman who died of Ebola to the burial site in Bwera, Uganda.
MELANIE ATUREEBE/EPA
Ebola is difficult to contain because of human social and behavioural factors. But it can be if 100% of the infected people’s contacts are identified and monitored.