Posted in:
Four people have died of Ebola in Guinea in the first resurgence of the disease in five years, the health minister said on Saturday.
Remy Lamah told AFP officials they were “really concerned” about the deaths, the first since a 2013-2016 epidemic, which began in Guinea, caused 11,300 deaths across the region.
One of the latest casualties in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill in late January and was buried on February 1, National Health Security Agency chief Sakoba Keita told local media.
“Among those who attended the funeral, eight people presented with symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding,” he said.
“Three of them died and four more are in the hospital.”
The four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever occurred in the southeastern region of Nzerekore, he said.
Keita also told local media that a patient had “escaped” but had been found and hospitalized in the capital Conakry. He confirmed the comments to AFP without giving further details.
The World Health Organization has watched every new outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the latest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an international health emergency.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has faced several outbreaks of the disease, and the WHO confirmed a resurgence on Thursday three months after authorities declared an end to the country’s latest outbreak.
The country had said the six-month epidemic ended in November. It was the country’s eleventh Ebola outbreak, causing 55 lives out of 130 cases.
The widespread use of vaccines, which were administered to more than 40,000 people, helped curb the disease.
The 2013-2016 outbreak accelerated the development of an Ebola vaccine, with a global emergency reserve of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the Gavi vaccine alliance said in January.
(AFP)