An eerie silence hangs over the hospital in Uige, which doctors now believe is the main source of the Marburg virus, for which there is no known cure.
In Uige province alone, some 160 people have been killed by the virus which has claimed 98 percent of those infected in the outbreak, described by the United Nations as “the worst ever” and “not yet under control.”
I first read about Marburg virus several years back in the book, The Coming Plague which apart from it’s dramatic title makes for fascinating reading. The vector for Ebola has been tracked to a cave, if you can imagine. They’ve figured out the virus spawned from a single place but, they can’t figure out the disease vector. Humans are eaten up so fast by Ebola (hemmoragic fever) they don’t make decent carriers for the disease so, scientists conclude there is another ‘host’ organism which carries the virus and spreads it but they haven’t been able to find out what form the host takes.
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