1. Marburg virus
In 1967 scientists identified Marburg virus, when small outbreaks happened among some lab workers in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany who were directly exposed to infected green monkeys imported from Uganda for research. Marburg virus is quite similar to Ebola in that both can cause hemorrhagic fever, meaning that infected people develop high fevers and bleeding throughout the body that can eventually lead to shock, organ failure and death.
In the first outbreak the mortality rate was 25 percent, but it was more than 80 percent in the 1998-2000 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in the 2005 outbreak in Angola, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It’s important to know that the reservoir host of Marburg virus is the African fruit bat and unlike humans and primates, these bats infected with Marburg virus do not show obvious signs of illness.
