The Most Lethal Viruses Known To Mankind

Marburg

The Marburg virus, also known as BSL-4, was first identified in 1967 when a group of German and Serbian lab workers contracted a hemorrhagic fever from African green monkeys being used to research vaccines for polio. The Marburg virus, tragically, has no cure and is spread through human contact. Symptoms start with a headache, fever, rash, and then develop into internal bleeding, organ failure, and death. The mortality rate associated with the Marburg virus has progressed from twenty-five percent during the initial outbreak to eighty percent in recent cases.

Ebola

First discovered in the sub-Saharan African nations in 1976, Ebola is a deadly virus named after its location of origin near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Symptoms and complications of this virus include bleeding from the eyes, hemorrhagic fever, headache, sore throat, internal bleeding, organ failure, and death. One strain of the Ebola virus does not even make patients feel sick before progressive internal bleeding and organ failure begin. According to the World Health Organization, the mortality rate of Ebola is between fifty and seventy percent. There is no cure for Ebola, although it has been successfully treated in some cases.