Haemorrhagic fevers are caused by a wide range of viruses. Some of them are known to spread easily by person to person contact and are able to cause nosocomial infections with high fatality rates. This applies especially to arenaviruses (Lassa fever and more exceptionally the Junin and Machupo vi-rus), a bunyavirus (Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever) and the Filoviridae (Ebola and Marburg viruses). Because these diseases occur initially with non-specific influenza-like symptoms like fever, headache, myalgia etc. clinical dia-gnosis can be difficult. Therefore a quick, sensitive and specific diagnostic me-thod is needed to confirm or rule out infection. Since the viruses are endemic in developing countries the method should also be as cheap as possible. The Re-verse-Transcription PCR combines these characteristics best.
In this thesis RT-PCR protocols were developed that were used to detect all viruses mentioned above in one single run (except Ebola-bundibugyo which was discovered after the practical part). An internal control was implemented to minimize the risk of false-negative results.
