蜜芽传媒

Health authorities in Guinea have confirmed one death from the Marburg virus, the first case ever found in West Africa.

The patient who died went to a clinic earlier this month. His contacts have been traced and are being monitored.

There is no vaccine for the disease which like Ebola, causes bleeding from the eyes, mouth and nose and is highly infectious.

Dr Krutika Kuppalli is Assistant Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina. She says the authorities were much quicker getting on top of the situation that they were during the 2014 Ebola outbreak - and so she hopes it can be contained.

"They quickly confirmed this was Marburg... and there were already individuals on the ground helping support the contact tracing. We didn't have that in the 2014 outbreak because Ebola had never been seen in West Africa."

(Photos: Electron Micrograph Of The Marburg Virus. Credit: Getty Images)