Marburg fever outbreak kills miner in Uganda-WHO

GENEVA, Aug 2 (Reuters) The deadly Marburg haemorrhagic fever has broken out in a mining community in western Uganda, killing one person and possibly infecting four others, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

The Kitaka mine, located in Kamwenge district some 250 km west of the capital Kampala, has been shut down temporarily, WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said.

The rare but highly fatal disease, caused by a virus from the same family as the one that causes Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is transmitted by close contact with blood or other body fluids and can cause bleeding from multiple orifices.

''We have one confirmed case of death from Marburg haemorrhagic fever plus up to four rumoured or suspected cases,'' Hartl said.

The confirmed case was a 29-year-old miner who died on July 14 after accompanying another sick miner in an ambulance to hospital from a local clinic, he said. His laboratory results were only received this week.

The sick miner, 21, has been discharged from hospital after recovering. Tests have not yet been confirmed whether he had been infected with Marburg fever, though it is strongly suspected, Hartl said.

A WHO official in Uganda was helping the health ministry, which has deployed a rapid response team. Officials have been tracing contacts of the sick men and carrying out public awareness campaigns in the area.

There is no vaccine or specific treatment for Marburg disease, which begins abruptly with severe headache and fever followed by rapid debilitation. Severe diarrhoea, abdominal pain and vomiting begin about the third day, and in fatal cases, death occurs eight to nine days after the onset of symptoms.

The first cases of Marburg occurred in 1967 among laboratory workers in Germany and former Yugoslavia who handled African green monkeys imported from Uganda. Despite years of research, no animal reservoir or other environmental source of the virus has been identified although bats have been investigated.

A major outbreak occurred among gold miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1998 and 2000, causing 128 deaths among 154 cases. An outbreak in Angola in 2004-05 killed 150 people among 163 cases, according to the WHO.

REUTERS PD RN1640