IN view of the proximity to Nigeria of the neighbouring West African country Ghana, where the Marburg virus has been discovered, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) last week indicated that Nigeria was at moderate risk of the disease. The agency therefore directed citizens to conduct tests for the virus at the National Reference Laboratory in Abuja and the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital Laboratory Centre for Human and Zoonotic Virology. The agency, which spoke following the outbreak of the disease in Ghana, as confirmed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on July 17, said that it was on high alert given Ghana’s proximity to Nigeria and the WHO’s alert. According to media reports, cases of the disease in Ghana were detected in two unrelated males aged 26 and 51 respectively, both of whom died of the disease.
Reports say that this is the second time the zoonotic disease has been detected in West Africa following the previous case in Guinea in August 2021. In this regard, the key facts about the disease, as presented by the WHO, are quite revealing. The Marburg virus disease (MVD), formerly known as Marburg haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans. The virus causes severe viral haemorrhagic fever in humans and the average MVD case fatality rate is around 50 percent. Case fatality rates varied from 24 percent to 88 percent in past outbreaks depending on virus strain and case management. Early supportive care with rehydration and symptomatic treatment is said to improve survival rates. There is as yet no licensed treatment proven to neutralise the virus, but a range of blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies, are currently under development. The virus is transmitted to people from fruit bats and spreads through human-to-human transmission.
While noting that community engagement is key to successfully controlling outbreaks, the global health agency says that the Marburg virus is the causative agent of MVD, a disease with a case fatality ratio of up to 88 per cent, but which can be much lower with good patient care. It notes that MVD was initially detected in 1967 after simultaneous outbreaks in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany and in Belgrade, Serbia, and that Marburg and Ebola viruses are both members of the Filoviridae family (filovirus). Thus, although caused by different viruses, the two diseases are clinically similar: they are rare and have the capacity to cause outbreaks with high fatality rates.
Nigeria’s doors must be permanently shut to MVD. Already, the country is battling with COVID-19, monkeypox and other diseases which have taken a rather huge toll in terms of human and material costs and losses. Confronted with the threat of Ebola, the country summoned state and federal resources and contained the disease with minimal losses of human life. However, with COVID-19, it has, like the rest of the world, suffered untold agony and would not wish to experience a recurrence of such ever again. Everything should therefore be done to keep the disease away from Nigeria. If anything, the outbreak of MVD in Ghana should be a signal to Nigeria to be alive to the strict medical policing of its borders in order to stave off its transmission to the country. The country is notoriously loose in its border policing architecture and orientation and it is time to buckle down and save Nigerian lives, particularly as any outbreak of a disease at this time is bound to do irreparable damage to vast populations of Nigerians who are already battling poverty and despondency.
We call on all the concerned government agencies to be alert and proactive in enlightening Nigerians on what steps to take to protect themselves and what to do if there is suspicion of infection. The country obviously does not have a robust health infrastructure with which to react and deal effectively with the outbreak of any contagious virus. It is therefore prudent to be on the alert to prevent major spread and infusion of the MVD or any other virus or disease into the country. Prevention is always better than having to cope with the outbreak, and we expect health agencies and officials to be on the ready with strategies and measures to ensure that Nigerians are spared the spread and transmission of MVD virus to the country.
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