Image used for representative purpose only.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United States government completed an initial shipment of vaccine doses and therapeutic drugs for Marburg disease to Rwanda on Oct. 4, Thierry Roels, U.S. CDC Country Director in Rwanda told Reuters on Saturday (October 5, 2024).

The U.S. government is also working closely with international partners and Rwanda’s Ministry of Health on the start of clinical trials to evaluate investigational countermeasures, he said.

Mr. Roels added that the U.S. government was considering additional shipments that can supply the clinical trials, but did not say how many doses had been delivered on Friday.

Rwanda’s first outbreak of the viral hemorrhagic fever was detected in late September, with 36 cases and 11 deaths reported so far. Marburg has a fatality rate as high as 88%.

Rwandan Health Minister Sabin Nsanziman said on Thursday that the country will start clinical trials of experimental vaccines and treatments for the disease.

Four vaccine candidates have been evaluated for potential use in trials by WHO, but only one, made by the Sabin Vaccine Institute non-profit, has data from early-stage human trials showing it is safe and led to an immune response. Further testing of the vaccines outside of outbreak settings is not possible because of the risks involved.

The Sabin Vaccine Institute said on Saturday it had delivered around 700 doses of its vaccine to Rwanda, to be used in a trial targeting frontline workers, including healthcare professionals.

The non-profit institute also said it plans to supply additional vaccines pending a request from the Rwanda government and authorization from U.S. Center for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).

Gilead Sciences said on Thursday it would donate about 5,000 vials of its antiviral drug remdesivir to the Rwanda Medical Supply for emergency use in response to the outbreak.

Marburg symptoms include high fever, severe headaches and malaise within seven days of infection and later severe nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. It is transmitted to humans by fruit bats, and then spreads through contact with the bodily fluids of those infected.

In this Oct. 8, 2014 photo, a medical worker from the Infection Prevention and Control unit wearing full protective equipment carries a meal to an isolation tent housing a man being quarantined after coming into contact in Uganda with a carrier of the Marburg Virus, at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya.
| Photo Credit: AP

Rwanda says eight people have died so far from the Ebola-like and highly contagious Marburg virus, just days after the country declared an outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic fever that has no authorized vaccine or treatment.

Like Ebola, the Marburg virus originates in fruit bats and spreads between people through close contact with the bodily fluids of infected individuals or with surfaces, such as contaminated bed sheets. Without treatment, Marburg can be fatal in up to 88% of people who fall ill with the disease.

Rwanda, a landlocked country in central Africa, declared an outbreak on Friday and a day later the first six deaths were reported.

So far 26 cases have been confirmed, and eight of the sickened people have died, Health Minister Sabin Nsanzimana said on Sunday night.

The public has been urged to avoid physical contact to help curb the spread. Some 300 people who came into contact with those confirmed to have the virus have also been identified, and an unspecified number of them have been put in isolation facilities.

Most of the affected are healthcare workers across six out of 30 districts in the country.

“Marburg is a rare disease,” Mr. Nsanzimana told journalists. “We are intensifying contact tracing and testing to help stop the spread.”

The Minister said the source of the disease has not been determined yet. A person infected with the virus can take between three days and three weeks to show symptoms, he added.

Symptoms include fever, muscle pains, diarrhea, vomiting and, in some cases, death through extreme blood loss.

The World Health Organization was scaling up its support and will work with Rwandan authorities to help stop the spread, WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday on the social media platform X.

The U.S Embassy in Rwanda’s capital of Kigali has urged its staff to work remotely and avoid visiting offices.

Marburg outbreaks and individual cases have in the past been recorded in Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Congo, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda and Ghana, according to the WHO.

The rare virus was first identified in 1967 after it caused simultaneous outbreaks of disease in laboratories in Marburg, Germany, and Belgrade, Serbia. Seven people died who were exposed to the virus while conducting research on monkeys.

Separately, Rwanda has so far reported six cases of mpox, a disease caused by a virus related to smallpox but that typically causes milder symptoms. Mpox, previously known as monkeypox because it was first seen in research monkeys, has also affected several other African countries in what the WHO has called a global health emergency.

Rwanda launched an mpox vaccination campaign earlier this month, and more vaccines are expected to arrive in the country. Neighboring Congo has so far reported most of the cases of mpox, the epicenter of the emergency.