CONAKRY, Feb 14, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Four people have died of Ebola in Guinea
in the first resurgence of the disease in five years, the country’s health
minister said Saturday.
Remy Lamah told AFP officials were “really concerned” about the deaths, the
first since a 2013-2016 epidemic — which began in Guinea — left 11,300 dead
across the region.
One of the latest victims in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill in late
January and was buried on February 1, National Health Security Agency head
Sakoba Keita told local media.
“Among those who took part in the burial, eight people showed symptoms:
diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding,” he said.
“Three of them died and four others are in hospital.”
The four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever occurred in the southeast
region of Nzerekore, he said.
Keita also told local media that one patient had “escaped” but had been
found and hospitalised in the capital Conakry. He confirmed the comments to
AFP without giving further detail.
The World Health Organization has eyed each new outbreak since 2016 with
great concern, treating the most recent one in the Democratic Republic of
Congo as an international health emergency.
Early Sunday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that the UN
health agency had been informed of two suspected cases of the deadly disease
in Guinea.
“Confirmatory testing underway,” the tweet said, adding that WHO’s regional
and country offices were “supporting readiness and response efforts.”
DR Congo has faced several outbreaks of the illness, with the WHO on
Thursday confirming a resurgence three months after authorities declared the
end of the country’s latest outbreak.
The country had declared that the six-month epidemic over in November. It
was the country’s eleventh Ebola outbreak, claiming 55 lives out of 130
cases.
The widespread use of vaccinations, which were administered to more than
40,000 people, helped curb the disease.
The 2013-2016 outbreak sped up the development of a vaccine against Ebola,
with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly
to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.