UAE Warns Its Citizens Against Travelling To Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea Over Marburg Virus Outbreak
The United Arab Emirates has warned its citizens and residents against travelling to Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania due to outbreaks of the Marburg virus.
In a statement, the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation urged citizens to postpone their trips to the two African countries.
It also called on citizens living in Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania or who are visiting to take precautions and follow the relevant health measures to protect themselves from the virus.
On Tuesday, the UAE issued a second warning against the Marburg virus, advising citizens and residents to take precautions if they have travelled to the countries where an outbreak has been reported.
Saudi Arabia and Oman have issued similar warnings as the World Health Organization estimated that the death toll from the outbreak is double what authorities have been reporting.
The death toll from an outbreak of Marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea had reached nine, the health ministry told AFP on Thursday last week amid WHO estimates the real toll is double that.
The outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever has spread beyond the province of Kie-Ntem, where it caused the first known deaths in January and reached Bata, the economic capital of the West African nation.
The ministry raised the confirmed death toll from seven just a day after the WHO urged the country to report all cases over fears transmission may be more widespread.
The reported cases are in three provinces 150 kilometres apart, “suggesting wider transmission of the virus,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday.
On March 22, WHO Africa regional headquarters said it knew of 20 further probable cases, all of whom were dead and the organization’s alert and response director Abdi Mahamud noted: “signs of the wide spread of transmission that are making us (worried).”
He added: “This outbreak, as it stands, is larger and may be seen in more provinces. More than the case count number, it’s the extent of the geographical spread.”
The Marburg virus causes severe fever, often accompanied by bleeding and organ failure.
It is part of the so-called filovirus family that also includes Ebola, which has wreaked havoc in several previous outbreaks in Africa.
Citing nine “laboratory-confirmed deaths,” the ministry tweeted there were a further 13 positive cases, two of whom had been hospitalized and another who had recovered while “a total of 825 contacts have been followed up.”
The WHO has warned of a potential large-scale epidemic which could spread to neighbouring Gabon and Cameroon.
Tanzania also announced last week five deaths from Marburg but insisted it has the spread under control after sending a rapid response team to the northwestern region of Kagera which borders Uganda.
The suspected natural source of the Marburg virus is the African fruit bat, which carries the pathogen but does not fall sick from it.
There are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments, but potential treatments, including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies, as well as early candidate vaccines being evaluated.
