Rwanda’s Marburg cases decline but mpox spreading in Africa, health officials say

Rwanda’s outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus is easing after vaccinations of the most vulnerable people including healthcare workers, but mpox cases are still spreading to new African countries, Rwanda’s health minister and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s head said on Thursday.

In early October, Rwanda began administering vaccine doses against the Marburg virus to combat an outbreak of the Ebola-like disease in the east African country.

New infections have now reduced by more than 50% compared with the first two weeks, health minister Sabin Nsanzimana said, adding that the country had experienced consecutive days without new cases or deaths and that most people were recovering in treatment centres.

“Overall, the trend is very encouraging, very positive, both on the new infections declining significantly, and also the mortality reducing,” Nsanzimana told reporters in an online briefing.

The minister said the latest numbers showed 62 confirmed cases of the viral hemorrhagic fever and 15 deaths. He said that 38 people had recovered from the disease and nine were still under treatment.

Meanwhile, the mpox outbreak that the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern continued to spread on the continent, Jean Kaseya, director general of Africa CDC, told the same briefing.

The number of affected countries rose from six member states of the African Union in April to 18 in October, Kaseya said.

“We don’t want to see all African countries being affected. This is why we need to intensify our effort,” he said.

Africa has seen more than 42,000 suspected mpox cases including 1,100 deaths so far this year, according to Africa CDC data.

Kaseya said that while over $800 million have been pledged for the agency’s fight against mpox, donors are slow to translate these promises into money and vaccines needed to accelerate the response.

“We want now to see concrete action on the ground to stop this outbreak… We cannot continue like that. We need to save lives of people, we need to give future to our continent.”