Marburg virus outbreak: What is it, how does it spread, is there a cure?

The Marburg virus killed 12 people in Rwanda in early October, triggering the country's first confirmed outbreak of the highly virulent disease, which can have a fatality rate of nearly 90%. Marburg comes from the same family as the Ebola virus and caused occasional outbreaks and sporadic cases, mostly in central and southern Africa, until Guinea in West Africa confirmed a single, fatal case in August 2021. In the following years it then reappeared for the first time in other countries on the continent. The recent cases show once again how a pathogen found in flying foxes can cross the species barrier and infect humans, increasing the risk of a major outbreak.

It belongs to the Filoviridae family of viruses, which can cause severe and potentially fatal hemorrhagic fever in humans. Marburg virus disease was recognized in 1967 when there were simultaneous outbreaks in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, both in Germany, and in the Serbian capital Belgrade. The cases were traced to vervet monkeys imported from Uganda for research and polio vaccine production. Nine years later, a closely related virus was found to have caused a deadly outbreak in a village near the Ebola River in Congo, giving the disease its name. Since then, many other viruses known to cause similar diseases in humans have been discovered around the world, with globalization, international travel and climate change facilitating their spread.