[Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) with a Potential for Human-to-Human Transmission]

Lassa virus, Ebola virus, Marburg virus and Crimean Congo virus, as well as much rarer viruses that cause Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (VHF), are zoonoses. Where these viruses are endemic, they cause both individual diseases, so-called "spill-over events" with isolated human cases after transmission from their animal reservoir, as well as epidemic outbreaks with cases of disease transmitted from person to person, and often high mortality. In this article, the focus will be on VHFs with the potential for human-to-human transmission; these diseases are so-called "high-consequence infectious diseases (HCID)" with partly considerable potential for epidemic spread and the risk of nosocomial disease transmission. In some cases, other viral infections without the possibility of human-to-human transmission, such as yellow fever or dengue fever, can also be accompanied by bleeding or multi-organ failure.