Rwanda starts administering Marburg jabs

Rwanda said it unrolled a Marburg vaccination campaign after some 21 people were killed by the virus.

Vaccination would at first focus on medics combating the disease and those most vulnerable, Health Minister Sabin Nsanzimana told reporters.

On October 4, The United States government completed an initial shipment of vaccine doses and therapeutic drugs for Marburg disease to Rwanda.

The virus, which has a fatality rate of up to 88%, on par with Ebola, spreads from bats to humans and then through contact with bodily fluids or infected individuals.

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

The health minister said officials were tracking about 300 people who had come into contact with individuals affected by the Marburg virus.

The World Health Organization is 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.

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