“Marburg virus is notorious for its killing ability. In past outbreaks, as many as 9 out of 10 patients have died from the disease. And there are no approved vaccines or medications,” reports NPR.
By contrast, bubonic plague kills only about 40-70% of people who are untreated after they get it, and only 1-15% of bubonic plague victims who are treated die. So Marburg is much more lethal than even the bubonic plague that swept Europe, Asia, and Africa in the 14th Century, killing at least 50 million people.
But now, progress is being made in saving the lives of Marburg victims. NPR notes that the situation in Rwanda was grim
just over a month ago, when officials made the announcement that nobody wants to make: The country was in the midst of its first Marburg outbreak.
Now those same Rwandan officials have better news to share. Remarkably better. ‘We are at a case fatality rate of 22.7% — probably among the lowest ever recorded [for a Marburg outbreak],’ said Dr. Yvan Butera, the Rwandan Minister of State for Health at a press conference hosted by Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday.
There’s more heartening news: Two of the Marburg patients, who experienced multiple organ failure and were put on life support, have now been extubated — had their breathing tubes successfully removed — and have recovered from the virus. ‘We believe this is the first time patients with Marburg virus have been extubated in Africa,’ says Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization. ‘These patients would have died in previous outbreaks.’ The number of new cases in Rwanda has also dwindled dramatically, from several a day to just 4 reported in the last two weeks, bringing the total for this outbreak to 66 Marburg patients and 15 deaths.”…..
The improved survival rate is because patients in Rwanda had good supportive care for their symptoms, such as the IV fluids critical for symptoms like high fevers, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Usually, African health systems don’t provide that.
For example, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda’s huge neighbor to the west, had an outbreak of Marburg virus from 1998-2000, which had a death rate of over 80%. The Congo’s backward health system provided only rudimentary health care to patients. “We called it a care center or treatment center, but really it was a separate mud hut that people were placed in. We didn’t have really anything available to us,” a doctor recalls. “People were lucky that they got paracetamol, or Tylenol, and some fluids to drink, if they could get them down without the nausea and vomiting preventing them.” That outbreak had a death rate of 83% with 154 cases and 128 deaths.
In the world’s 18 recorded Marburg outbreaks, the death rate varies a lot. The biggest outbreak — in Angola in 2004 and 2005 — had a death rate of 90% with 252 cases and 227 deaths.
