Rwanda begins vaccination drive to curb Marburg virus outbreak

Government to prioritise those ‘most at risk’ and ‘most exposed healthcare workers’ following the deaths of 12 people.

Rwanda has announced that it has started administering vaccine doses against the Marburg virus to try to combat an outbreak of the Ebola-like disease in the East African country.

“The vaccination is starting today immediately,” Health Minister Sabin Nsanzimana said at a news conference on Sunday in the capital, Kigali.

The Marburg virus has killed 12 people in Rwanda since it was declared an outbreak on September 27. Authorities said at the time that the first cases had been found among patients in health facilities. There is still no confirmation of the source of the outbreak.

The minister said the vaccinations would focus on those “most at risk, most exposed healthcare workers working in treatment centres, in the hospitals, in ICU, in emergency, but also the close contacts of the confirmed cases”.

“We believe that, with vaccines, we have a powerful tool to stop the spread of this virus,” the minister said. The country has already received shipments of the vaccines including from the Sabin Vaccine Institute.

The Marburg virus has a ‘filamentous’ structure and is transmitted by fruit bats [Shutterstock]

The government said there were 46 confirmed cases, with 29 of them in isolation. Health authorities have identified at least 400 people who came into contact with confirmed cases of the virus.

Like Ebola, the Marburg virus is believed to originate in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals or with surfaces, such as contaminated bedsheets.

Without treatment, Marburg can be fatal in up to 88 percent of people who fall ill with the disease.

Its symptoms include fever, muscle pains, diarrhoea, vomiting and, in some cases, extreme blood loss, often leading to death. There is no authorised vaccine or treatment for Marburg.

Marburg outbreaks and individual cases have in the past been recorded in Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Ghana, according to the World Health Organization.