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Medicine

Ghana Reports First Cases of Deadly Ebola-like Marburg Virus (theguardian.com) 45

Two cases of the deadly Marburg virus have been identified in Ghana, the first time the Ebola-like disease has been found in the west African nation. From a report: Earlier in the month, blood samples taken from two people in the southern Ashanti region suggested they had the Marburg virus. The samples were sent to the Pasteur Institute in Senegal, which confirmed the diagnosis, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said. "This is the first time Ghana has confirmed Marburg virus disease," said the GHS head, Patrick Kuma-Aboagye. No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg, which is almost as deadly as Ebola. Its symptoms include high fever as well as internal and external bleeding. Ninety-eight people identified as contact cases were under quarantine, the GHS statement said, noting that no other cases of Marburg had yet been detected in Ghana. The World Health Organization declared Ghana's first outbreak. "Health authorities have responded swiftly, getting a headstart preparing for a possible outbreak," said the WHO regional director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti.
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Ghana Reports First Cases of Deadly Ebola-like Marburg Virus

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  • Who cares, hey, they neither manufacture our crap nor do they buy our crap, it's not like we care that a couple thousand people croak.

    As long as this doesn't affect us, don't expect us to do anything. Of course, as soon as it does, everyone will lament how we didn't do something back when we could have avoided the disaster to hit home...

    • by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
      There are global [un.org] efforts in Ghana. The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation also does "health" work there, but...
      It doesn't mean these are substantive efforts, just that external organizations do exist to monitor and "help" with major outbreaks.
  • Why is it that the horrible diseases seem to come from these areas?

    You don't see horrible, ebola like diseases coming out of the blue from areas say, like Reno, Nevada, or the south side of Paris, France....

    • Re:Why is it...? (Score:4, Informative)

      by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday July 18, 2022 @11:40AM (#62712704) Journal
      Why is it that the horrible diseases seem to come from these areas?

      Warm termperatures and a diverse ecosystem [navytimes.com]. Without the cold temperatures to tamp down growth, infectous diseases can have a field day. When combined with people moving among animals carrying the diseases or walking through places where the diseases exist, infection rates will soar.

      Also, have you seen how barren Reno is? I don't mean the town itself, I mean it's environment. There's not much vegetation or animal life for viruses to grow in. Without those incubators, you don't get the good stuff.
      • Add to that poor vaccination coverage and low-quality health care (particularly for Marburg) where contact with contaminated body fluids is a primary method of infection. Burial ceremonies that result in contact with blood or other bodily fluids is also a transmission method for Marburg and other pathogens.
        • low-quality health care

          Marburg has no specific treatment better than symptomatic support (cool fevered bodies ; hydrate sweating bodies ; feed and ventilate). Regardless of how good your health care system (or how high the bills), it doesn't get significantly better than that.

          Burial ceremonies that result in contact with blood or other bodily fluids is also a transmission method for Marburg and other pathogens.

          That was certainly an issue in the 2013-4-5 Ebola outbreak, but I don't know if it's an issue in M

      • Why is it that the horrible diseases seem to come from these areas?

        Warm termperatures and a diverse ecosystem [navytimes.com]. Without the cold temperatures to tamp down growth, infectous diseases can have a field day. When combined with people moving among animals carrying the diseases or walking through places where the diseases exist, infection rates will soar.

        Also, have you seen how barren Reno is? I don't mean the town itself, I mean it's environment. There's not much vegetation or animal life for viruses to grow in. Without those incubators, you don't get the good stuff.

        I think it's more complicated than that.

        Look back to the discovery of the New World when all the horrible diseases came from Europe (smallpox). As far as I know the only major disease to come from the New World was Syphilis. If warm diverse ecosystems are the issue then one might have expected the discovery of the Amazon to have unleashed a massive pile of nasty. But the only scary one from there seems to have been Zika.

        Instead, the current pattern seems to be hemorrhagic fevers from Central Africa, respira

    • You're going to see novel diseases in places with lots of livestock or in biodiverse areas. A megalopolis where the species are humans, dogs, and some sparrows isn't as good an incubator for novel pathogens, but it is a hell of an environment for one to spread in once it makes its way into it.
      • by vivian ( 156520 )

        As long as it's diseases where you start bleeding out every orifice in a matter of hours, I'm not too worried - that tends to get noticed and stopped quickly.
        it's when you get a disease that bides its time with a long contagious period without symptoms that it's really worrying.

        • Agreed, the more esoteric/visible symptoms definitely get a better reaction even if they end up killing far fewer people in total than 'boring' stuff like respiratory viruses.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      and here i assumed most everyone on this site would have passed high school biology.

      "why is there more diverse abundance of life in the tropics than the desert" is a question for 4th graders

    • by dasunt ( 249686 )

      Why is it that the horrible diseases seem to come from these areas?
      You don't see horrible, ebola like diseases coming out of the blue from areas say, like Reno, Nevada, or the south side of Paris, France....

      Perhaps it has something to do with humans are native to Africa, with all extant members of Homininae (excluding humans) are still only found in Africa and almost all extinct Homininae were also limited to Africa.

      Seems like a good setup for zoonotic diseases.

      Although the 1918 flu may have originate

      • Perhaps it has something to do with [...] were also limited to Africa. Seems like a good setup for zoonotic diseases.

        Actually, the introduction of a new domesticated animal to a population is a better setup. Hence (probably) measles probably coming in with the domestication of cattle in (eastern) Europe about 8000 years ago, a variety of things coming in with pigs and sheep in the Levant a thousand years before that.

        Although the 1918 flu may have originated in northern France during the fighting in WWI. A

    • hemorraghic pandemic. That would get ugly real fast.
  • ...Marburg gives infected that incredible urge to go to the airport and book a middle-seat to anywhere.

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