A sample from a remote Tanzanian region tests positive for Marburg disease, confirming WHO fears

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ARUSHA, Tanzania (AP) — Tanzania’s president said Monday that one sample from a remote part of northern Tanzania tested positive for Marburg disease, a highly infectious virus which can be fatal in up to 88% of cases without treatment.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan spoke in Dodoma, the capital, alongside World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

WHO was the first to report on Jan. 14 a suspected outbreak of Marburg that had killed eight people in Tanzania’s Kagera region. Tanzanian health officials disputed the report hours later, saying tests on samples had returned negative results.

Hassan said Monday that further tests had confirmed a case of Marburg. Twenty-five other samples were negative, she said.

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 bedsheets.

Symptoms include fever, muscle pains, diarrhea, vomiting and in some cases death from extreme blood loss. There is no authorized vaccine or treatment for Marburg.

This is the second outbreak of Marburg in Kagera since 2023. It comes exactly a month after Rwanda, which shares with a border with Kagera, declared its own outbreak of the disease was over.

Rwandan officials reported a total of 15 deaths and 66 cases in the outbreak first declared on Sept. 27, with the majority of those affected health care workers who handled the first patients.

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This story has been corrected to show that Tanzania’s president spoke in Dodoma, not Dar es Salaam.