The Marburg virus is the causative agent of Marburg hemorrhagic fever. Both the disease and virus are related to Ebola and originate in a similar area (Uganda and western Kenya). Its source is a zoonose of unknown origin.
This virus was first documented in 1967, when 37 people became ill in the German towns of Marburg and Frankfurt am Main, apparently caused by infectious, imported African green monkeys (Ceropithecus aethiops) from Uganda. It was the first filovirus to be identified. Further, limited outbreaks of the disease occurred in 1975, 1980 and 1987.
The disease is characterised by the sudden onset of fever, headache, and myalgia. Within a week a maculopapular rash develops followed by vomiting, chest and abdominal pain, and diarrhea. The disease can then become increasingly damaging, causing jaundice, delirium, liver failure, and extensive hemorrhage. Recovery from the disease is prolonged and can be marked by orchitis, recurrent hepatitis, transverse myelitis or uvetis, inflammation of spinal cord, eye, or parotid gland. The fatality rate is around 25%.
Marburghaemorrhagicfever is a rare, severe type of haemorrhagicfever which affects both humans and non-human primates.
Marburgvirus was first recognised in 1967, when outbreaks of haemorrhagicfever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now Serbia).
Because many of the signs and symptoms of Marburghaemorrhagicfever are similar to those of other infectious diseases, such as malaria or typhoid fever, diagnosis of the disease can be difficult, especially if only a single case is involved.
The original Bolivian haemorrhagicfever outbreak was brought to notice (and to investigation by the Middle America Research Unit) because of its severity.
Marburgfever received the fullest investigation from the start because it first occurred in highly developed countries, and affected laboratory workers.
Clearly the first priority for early recognition of potentially dangerous outbreaks must be to educate the health and administrative authorities, particularly in the tropics, of the need for some form of surveillance and reporting of outbreaks of acute febrile disease (particularly in hospital personnel) in all new agricultural ventures involving intrusion into underdeveloped territory.
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