Cameroon has detected two suspected cases of the deadly Marburg disease, days after neighbouring Equatorial Guinea declared an outbreak of the Ebola-like virus.
Two teenagers from Olamze, a border commune in south Cameroon, are being tested for the pathogen. Neither had travelled to the affected areas in Equatorial Guinea, authorities said.
“On the 13th of February, we had two suspected cases. These are two 16-year-old children, a boy and a girl,” said Robert Mathurin Bidjang, a Cameroonian public health official.
Forty-two people who came into contact with the two children have been identified and contact tracing was ongoing, he added.
Cameroon restricted movement along the border to avoid contagion following reports of an unknown, deadly hemorrhagic fever in Equatorial Guinea last week.
“Marburg is always very serious and we’re very concerned. The fact it's close to international borders is a concern,” said Prof Jimmy Whitworth, a specialist in infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Equatorial Guinea, which is home to just 1.6 million people, has so far reported nine deaths as well as 16 suspected cases of Marburg. Symptoms include fever, fatigue and blood-stained vomit and diarrhoea. More than 4,000 people have been placed in quarantine at their homes.
“Surveillance in the field has been intensified," said George Ameh, the World Health Organisation’s representative in Equatorial Guinea.
Marburg virus is a severe and highly infectious disease that can have a fatality rate of up to 88 per cent. It begins abruptly, with high fever, severe headache and severe malaise. Many patients develop severe haemorrhagic symptoms within seven days.
At an emergency meeting held by the WHO on Tuesday, it was announced that the index case occurred a month ago, on January 7, and the ministry of health was alerted four weeks later.
There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat it.
