The World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared an outbreak of the highly-infectious Marburg virus in Ghana after two men died of the disease.
And even though it’s a cause for concern in the African nation, experts say there’s no need to panic in Canada just yet. The disease, a very infectious hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola, is spread to people by fruit bats and transmitted among people through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected people and surfaces, according to the WHO.
So far, only four cases have been detected in Ghana. While the virus is highly contagious, some infectious disease experts say they aren’t worried about the virus impacting Canada at this point in time. “International travel can make this infection go beyond the current borders of Ghana … but it shouldn’t be, at least for the moment, a source of anxiety for the general public,” Dr.
Donald Vinh, an infectious diseases specialist at McGill University Health Centre, told Global News. Read more: WHO declares highly-infectious Marburg virus outbreak in Ghana Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at Toronto General Hospital, said that currently the risk of the virus coming to Canada and causing a major outbreak “would be extraordinarily small.” “The infection is very similar, not identical, to Ebola and we’ve seen small outbreaks of Ebola grow larger…and in the larger outbreaks, we’ve seen exported cases as well.