Child infected with Marburg virus in Ghana dies

A child infected with Marburg virus in Ghana has died.

According to Reuters, Ibrahima Soce Fall, an official of the World Health Organisation (WHO), confirmed the development on Tuesday.

The WHO identifies the Marburg virus as a highly infectious hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola. It is spread to people by fruit bats and transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected people and surfaces.

Illness begins abruptly and many patients develop severe haemorrhagic signs within seven days. There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments approved to treat the virus.

The death of the child, whose gender or age was not disclosed, brings the total number of fatalities in Ghana to three since the country confirmed the outbreak of the disease in July.

The two other persons who died were the index cases, a 26-year-old male and a 51-year-old male who were rushed to a hospital in the Ashanti region last month after showing symptoms such as diarrhoea, fever, nausea and vomiting.

The WHO official said the father of the child was one of the index cases.

“Last week, I mentioned the two additional cases. One is the wife of the index case and the other one is the child of the index case and the child unfortunately died, but the wife is still alive and improving,” the official said.

Fall added that the Ghanaian health ministry has only reported three confirmed cases and further testing remains to be done on a fourth suspected case.

This outbreak of Marburg is the second in West Africa.

The first-ever case of the virus in the region was detected in Guinea in 2021.