The General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr. Titus Beyuo, has commended the swiftness and professional manner in which healthcare workers responded to the two cases of Marburg virus infection.

According to him, their professionalism in handling the two cases has so far contributed significantly in preventing a mass outbreak especially among clinicians who directly dealt with the two victims.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, Dr. Beyuo said “To the extent that after the diagnosis we have not had several health workers infected also means that standard infection prevention and control measures were heeded to by our clinicians and cadre of healthcare workers that had attended to these two patients and that is why we haven’t had a mass outbreak among the health care workers’ and we’re getting good reports that most of them are doing pretty well.”

He also noted that the level of preparedness exhibited by the healthcare workers could also largely be attributed to the preparations the country made during the Ebola virus outbreak – the Marburg virus is a close relative of the Ebola virus.

“And it also speaks to the fact that we have been prepped as a nation because during Ebola, we put in a lot of measures, we sent workers to neighbouring countries to assist and we never had a condition in Ghana,” he said.

He further noted that the awareness and adherence to the standard infection prevention protocols which were exhibited by the health workers is also largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to him, had it not been for the reinforcement of the protocols following the Covid-19 outbreak, the response to the Marburg victims would have been sloppy leading to a mass outbreak in the hospital.

“Covid came, and we’re still in Covid, and I think Covid has done us a lot of good in this sense because it has put everybody in awareness and increased our adherence to our standard infection prevention protocols. I dare say that if there wasn’t Covid before this supposed outbreak, we’ll never know what might have happened because people might have taken things very lightly.

“So I think I’m pretty confident that should any of these contacts appear anywhere today, or somebody else who has not been picked up appear in any clinic today the clinicians are well able to pick up the patient by case definition to prevent spread,” he said.