Deadly Marburg disease breaks out in southwestern Uganda

The deadly Marburg disease has broken out in the south western Ugandan district of Kabale after samples taken to the Uganda Virus Institute tested positive, local media here reported on Friday. State owned New Vision reported that on Thursday police stopped the burial of two family members after it emerged that their family had lost four people from a mysterious disease in just a month. Patrick Tusiime, the Kabale district health officer, said a team from the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization is on its way to oversee the burial of the two victims. The Marburg virus was last reported in Uganda in 2008. According to the World Health Organization, Marburg is a severe and highly fatal disease caused by a virus from the same family as the one that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever. According to the global health body, the illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with severe headache and severe malaise. Case fatality rates have varied greatly, from 25 percent in the initial laboratory-associated outbreak in 1967, to more than 80 percent in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1998-2000, to even higher in the outbreak that began in Angola in late 2004.