Uganda‘s Ministry of Health confirmed Monday that a health worker died of Marburg virus–a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola. Health workers quarantined 80 others who were in contact with the victim. They are being monitored for all signs of the disease after a 30-year-old radiographer in a Kampala hospital died of Marburg. He had a headache, abdominal pains and diarrhea, and vomited blood before dying.
Though there is no cure or vaccine for the illness, Ugandan health workers are better prepared to contain this recent outbreak due to prior experience with Ebola. In 2000, Ebola killed at least 224 people in the country. Outbreaks after were managed within a few days and killed significantly less people. President Yoweri Musevini urged citizens to remain “calm but vigilant,” and to avoid shaking hands.
According to the CDC, “Marburg virus was first recognized in 1967, when outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).”