Ghana discharges 39 in isolation over Marburg concerns

The health authorities in Ghana have discharged 39 out of the 98 people who had been in isolation after coming into contact with one of the two people who recently died after contracting the Marburg virus.(BBC)

Those discharged had completed the 21-day isolation period and did not show any symptoms.

The country will wait for 42 days without a new case before declaring that the outbreak is over. But that period will only begin once the second of the two men who died has been buried.

There have been concerns over how the two patients were handled by medical personnel in terms of infection prevention and control measures which could have exposed them and others to the disease.

At the end of last month, two men reported to the Adansi North District hospital in the Ashanti region, exhibiting symptoms of acute haemorrhagic fever. They died shortly after being admitted.

Ghana declared an outbreak of the virus 10 days after confirming the two cases following confirmation by a WHO partner laboratory, Institute Pasteur, in Senegal.

Contact tracing and strict infection control measures have been introduced to prevent more fatalities.

Teams are also going into communities to make them aware of the symptoms and to ensure they alert health authorities if any suspected cases emerge.

This is the second time that Marburg has been identified in West Africa. There was one confirmed case in Guinea last year, but that outbreak was declared over in September, five weeks after the case was discovered.

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