Kigali Rwanda will start clinical trials of experimental vaccines and treatments for Marburg disease in the next few weeks, its health minister said on Thursday, to fight the country’s first outbreak of the viral fever, which has so far killed 11 people. The disease was detected in late September, with 36 cases reported so far, health ministry data shows.
This is part of our efforts to help people recover quickly by using vaccines and medicines specifically developed to fight this outbreak, now in the final phase of research,” said the minister, Sabin Nsanzimana.
We are collaborating with the pharmaceutical companies that developed these, alongside the World Health Organisation, to expedite the process through multilateral collaboration. The WHO said it was working with the government and had held a meeting of industry, academic and government partners to speed up access to vaccine and treatment doses for trials.
It has given ethical approval for these types of trials during Marburg outbreaks, and said the next urgent step was a similar approval from the Rwandan authorities. The WHO has also released funding, alongside the Canadian government and the EU’s Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (Hera), a spokesperson said.
Nsanzimana said the government was speaking to companies based in the US and Europe. Four vaccine candidates have been evaluated for potential use in trials by WHO, but only one, made by the Sabin Vaccine Institute nonprofit, has data from early-stage human trials showing it is safe and led to an immune response. Further testing of the vaccines outside outbreak settings is impossible due to the risks involved.
A number of treatments could be trialled, including Gilead Science’s remdesivir, an antiviral used during the pandemic to treat Covid-19 and originally developed to treat Ebola, which is related to Marburg. The ministry is monitoring 410 people who have been in contact with those infected, assistant health minister Yvan Butera said earlier. Five other people tested negative but were awaiting the results of further tests.
A viral haemorrhagic fever, Marburg symptoms include high fever, severe headaches and malaise that typically develop within seven days of infection, according to the WHO. With a fatality rate as high as 88%, it is transmitted to humans by fruit bats, before spreading through contact with the bodily fluids of those infected. Neighbouring Tanzania had cases of Marburg in 2023, as did Uganda in 2017.
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