Abstract:
Marburg virus disease (MVD) has been linked to two fatal
cases in Ghana’s Ashanti region. These cases were reported to
the appropriate health authorities on June 28, 2022, as sus-
pected cases of viral hemorrhagic fever, and on July 1, 2022,
Marburg virus (MARV) testing was positive. This is the first
time MVD has been made known in Ghana, and there has only
ever been one earlier outbreak of the disease reported in West
Africa. An MVD outbreak could pose a significant risk to the
public’s health because it is severe and frequently fatal [1] .
Three laboratories in West Germany and Yugoslavia reported
epidemics of a previously unidentified disease in 1967 that was
characterized by high temperature, hemorrhaging, and organ
failure [2] . The culprit responsible for the disease was later
determined to be a new virus known as MARV, the first
described member of the Filoviridae family [3] . The first
documented instance of the illness outside of a lab was
in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1975. Cases of the
illness were caused by MARV in 1980 and the Ravn virus,
another MARV, in 1987 [4] . Recent outbreaks have been linked
to higher pathogenicity and ~90% fatality in humans, com-
pared to earlier outbreaks that were linked to 20–40%
lethality [5]
