Marburg - Marburg Virus

Marburg Virus

The city's name is also connected to a filovirus, the Marburg virus, which was first noticed and described during an outbreak in the city. Workers were accidentally exposed to infected Green Monkey tissue at the city's former industrial plant (1967), the Behring-Werke, then part of Hoechst and today of CSL Behring, founded by Marburg citizen and first Nobel Prize in Medicine winner, Emil Adolf von Behring. During the outbreak, 31 people became infected and seven of them died. "Marburg virus" is named after the city per the custom of naming hemorrhagic fever viruses after the location of their first recorded outbreak.