ONE of the world’s most fatal bugs is spreading in Africa, experts have warned.
It comes as Cameroon – a country in central Africa – said it had detected two suspected cases of Marburg virus.
GettyTwo teenagers in Cameroon have tested positive for the deadly bug[/caption]
Neighbouring country, Equatorial Guinea, first reported an outbreak of the illness on Monday, which has already taken the live of eight people.
Cameroon had restricted movement along the border to avoid contagion of the disease which has an 88 per cent fatality rate.
But now, two teenagers in the country have contracted the bug.
“On the February 13, we had two suspected cases. These are two 16-year-old children, a boy and a girl,” Robert Mathurin Bidjang, a Cameroonian public health official.
Health officials in the country are now monitoring 42 people who were close contacts of the two teens, and following up for other contacts.
The killer bug, which is similar to Ebola, causes those who catch it, to bleed to death.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today convened an urgent meeting over the cases, calling in experts from around the world to discuss how to contain the disease.
Equatorial Guinea has as quarantined more than 200 people and has restricted movement.
The WHO’s representative in Equatorial Guinea, George Ameh, said: “Surveillance in the field has been intensified.
“Contact tracing, as you know, is a cornerstone of the response.
“We have redeployed the Covid teams that were there for contact tracing and quickly retrofitted them to really help us out.”
Many who catch the disease develop severe internal bleeding within a week, with blood from the nose, gums, vagina and in vomit and faeces, and die not long after.
The virus is transmitted to people from fruit bats, and it can spread between humans through direct contact with bodily fluids, surfaces and materials, the WHO said.
No treatment or vaccine exists for Marburg
In 2014-16 the largest outbreak of Ebola since 1970 began in Guinea.
Cases were recorded in Nigeria, the US, UK, Spain and Italy.
There were 28,616 suspected, probable and confirmed cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and 11,310 deaths.
There have been a dozen major Marburg outbreaks since it was discovered in Marburg, Germany, in 1967.
Cases have mostly been in southern and eastern Africa, including Angola, Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, WHO said.