21/12/2018
*‼Deadly Marburg Virus Found in Sierra Leone*
*_The discovery of a close cousin of the Ebola virus has raised concern about the risk of another disease outbreak in West Africa._*
Scientists have discovered the deadly Marburg virus in fruit bats in Sierra Leone, the first time this cousin of Ebola has been found in West Africa. There have been no reported cases of people or animals with active infections. But the pathogen’s presence in the bats raises the potential for it to infect humans in a new region more than a thousand miles from previously known outbreaks.
There have been a dozen known Marburg virus outbreaks in other parts of Africa, most recently in Uganda in 2017. Like Ebola, Marburg virus initially infects people through contact with wild animals. It can then spread person to person through contact with bodily fluids. It kills up to 9 in 10 of its victims, sometimes within a week.
The discovery was made by two teams of U.S. researchers and their partners in Sierra Leone. One was led by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Njala University, the other was led by the University of California at Davis and the University of Makeni.
The virus was found in Egyptian fruit bats, which are the natural reservoir for Marburg. That means the virus can live and grow inside the bats without harming the animals, and can be passed on to humans or other animals through bat saliva, urine or feaces. The bats live in caves or underground mines throughout much of Africa and parts of the Middle East and southwest Asia.
Marburg virus has been detected in Egyptian fruit bats caught in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also Kenya, South Africa and Gabon. But to find it in fruit bats in Sierra Leone — more than 1,600 miles from Gabon, the “closest dot on the map” of countries where the virus had previously been detected — provides scientists much more information about the potential viral landscape, said Brian
