20 December – Today, concludes the World Health Organization’s 42-day countdown since the last Marburg confirmed patient tested negative in Rwanda. The Government of Rwanda has declared the outbreak over.
The UK Emergency Medical Team, operated by UK-Med, has concluded its deployment to Rwanda after 64 days, having arrived in October at the request of the Rwandan Ministry of Health to help tackle the outbreak of Marburg virus (MVD). Marburg is a rare but severe disease, in the same family as the virus that causes Ebola Virus Disease, that can cause serious illness and death.
Since the outbreak was first declared on 27 September until the last confirmed case received with negative results on 7 November, a total of 66 confirmed cases and 15 deaths were reported, with a case fatality ratio (CFR) of 23%. Health workers accounted for almost 80% of the infected cases, while providing clinical care to their colleagues and other patients.
Ana Teresa Afonso, who the UK EMT deployment as the Health Technical Lead and Senior Advisor for Outbreak Responses, said:
“We’re very relieved to report the end of the Marburg outbreak in Rwanda. It marks the end of a hard period for Rwanda’s healthcare system, which has done an amazing job of stemming the spread of MVD in the country in a concerted manner. I’m proud of the support that our infection prevention and control team, nurses and doctors have provided for local healthcare workers in combating the impacts of this disease, by reinforcing support to essential health services.”
Funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office – a total of 16 UK-Med staff, 12 of them from the UK, were deployed to Rwanda to support the health response.
The team worked across facilities in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, providing support for intensive care (ICU) and operating theatre (OT), infection prevention and control (IPC), and emergency medical services (EMS). At the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Kigali (CHUK), the ICU team supported the delivery of high-quality informal teaching and bedside mentoring for nurses caring for critical patients that bolstered the local health response. The support, also contributed to strengthen the clinical practices for an essential area of care. The EMS and IPC teams delivered multiple trainings and quality improvement actions across health facilities in Kigali.
The medical team completed a total of 1,370 nursing interventions during the response, with 176 patients benefiting from UK EMT support. Additionally, multiple training sessions were also provided for local health staff, including nurses and ambulance drivers.
A total of 332 staff benefitted from clinical training, which has helped lay the foundations for longer-term improvements in clinical practices regarding infection prevention and control and prehospital emergency services. Equipped with improved skills and knowledge, local health staff will be better prepared to handle similar outbreaks in the future.
Lazaro Martinez, Team Leader for the UK EMT Rwanda Response, said:
“It gives me great pleasure to know our assistance has had a positive impact on the ground in Rwanda. We’ve supported local healthcare workers and the broader healthcare system to recover at a very vulnerable and difficult moment, by providing training and supporting clinical care. By working alongside our Rwandan colleagues, the trainings our team has delivered will help prepare them to be able to handle future outbreaks.”
