Forty-Five Years of Marburg Virus Research

Brauburger, Kristina; Hume, Adam J.; Mühlberger, Elke; Olejnik, Judith

The first measures in response to a MVD outbreak include setting up isolation wards in hospitals to assure rapid isolation of MARV-infected patients and prevent person-to-person transmission (Figure 3b ). Proper and fast laboratory diagnosis of suspected cases is key to eliminate further spread. Nosocomial infections were commonly seen in earlier outbreaks [8, 9, 23] . However, reinforcement of barrier nursing techniques and education of health care workers have limited these infections in recent outbreaks ( Figure 3a ). Epidemiological surveillance has been crucial in the identification of index cases as well as the predominant modes of transmission. In endemic areas, secondary infections mainly occurred while taking care of ill patients and family members or during traditional burial practices involving close contact to corpses [53] . Therefore, the execution of safe burial and disinfection techniques and information campaigns to educate the local population are essential in order to contain the spread of infections in endemic areas ( Figure 3a ) [27, 53, 54] .