Following Ghana’s confirmation of two cases of the deadly Marburg virus, a highly contagious illness that belongs to the same virus family as the virus that causes Ebola, Nigeria’s Center for Disease Control has declared a state of high alert.
Nigeria has the tools, according to a statement from the NCDC, for “rapid identification and handling in the event of a single imported case.”
It said that surveillance had been increased and that Nigerian medical personnel had been put on standby.
So far, no case of the virus has been reported in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous country – but the overall risk of importation was “moderate”, the agency said.
This week, Ghana verified the instances of the deadly illness. According to Ghanaian health authorities, both patients passed away and scores of their contacts were confined, but some have already been released.
The Marburg disease, a very infectious hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola, is spread to people by fruit bats and transmitted among people through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected people and surfaces, according to the World Health Organisation.
The first case was a 26-year-old male who checked into a hospital on June 26 and died on June 27. The second was a 51 -year-old male who went to the hospital on June 28 and died the same day, adding that both men sought treatment at the same hospital.