After registering seven cases and three deaths, public health authorities in Guinea announced a new Ebola outbreak. This is its first resurgence since 2016.
In the last outbreak, more than 11,300 people died. From 2014 to 2016, it’s the worst on record, and it began in a rural village in Guinea before tearing through Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Sakoba Keita, director of the National Health Protection Agency, said health investigators are scrambling to track and isolate suspicious connections.
A new Ebola treatment center is being built in the region.
Yet finances are thin in Guinea, one of the poorest countries in the world, which, on top of yellow fever and measles outbreaks, has also been facing the coronavirus pandemic.
“At the same time, we are facing four epidemics,” Keita said.
There were 14,895 coronavirus infections and 84 deaths in a country of 13 million. In the southeast area of Nzerekore, Keita said, where the new epidemic was detected, the Ebola vaccine roll-out is scheduled to commence as early as this week. Authorities blamed the spread on a nurse’s funeral on February 1st.
The question of if Ebola caused her death remains unknown, Keita said, but seven individuals who attended the funeral later exhibited the telltale signs: diarrhea, vomiting, and bleeding.
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Three of them dead: a man and two women. “Faced with this situation and in accordance with international health regulations, the Guinean government declares an Ebola epidemic,” Guinea’s health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The state encouraged those with signs to consult a physician.
“Together, we will win!” The health minister, Remy Lamah, said in a tweet.
The spread of Ebola is through contact with bodily fluids. Also infectious are the corpses of those who died of the disease.
Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said, “It’s a huge concern to see the resurgence of Ebola in Guinea, a country that has already suffered so much from the disease. However, banking on the expertise and experience built during the previous outbreak, health teams in Guinea are on the move to quickly trace the path of the virus and curb further infections.” he ended.
In 2014, the contagion blazed through the capital, Conakry, and into neighboring nations. Before the outbreak was recorded, officials recorded 28,616 cases in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
After more than 2,200 deaths, the authorities declared the end of Congo’s nearly two-year Ebola outbreak in June.
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