Guinea, Feb 15 (FN Bureau) Health officials in Guinea on Sunday confirmed that at least three people have died from Ebola there, the first cases declared since it was one of three West African nations to fight the world’s deadliest Ebola epidemic that ended five years ago. An additional five people have tested positive for Ebola in Gueckedou town in the country’s south, according to Dr Sakoba Keita, the head of Guinea’s National Health Security Agency. “I confirm it’s Ebola. The results prove it,” Minister of Health Remy Lamah told The Associated Press by phone.
The patients were tested for Ebola after showing symptoms of hemorrhagic fever and those who came in contact with the sick are already in isolation, said officials. Guinea’s announcement comes one week after eastern Congo confirmed it also had cases. The cases are not linked. Health experts in Guinea say these latest cases could be a major setback for the impoverished nation, already battling COVID-19 and which is still recovering from the previous Ebola outbreak, which killed 2,500 in Guinea where it began. More than 11,300 people died in that outbreak which also hit the neighbouring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone between 2014 and 2016.
“The resurgence of Ebola is very concerning for what it could do for the people, the economy, the health infrastructure,” said Dr Krutika Kuppalli, assistant professor of medicine for infectious diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina, who was the medical director of an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone during the previous outbreak. “We’re still understanding the repercussions of the (last) outbreak on the population,” she said. To contain the spread, the government and international health organizations must respond quickly and educate communities about what’s going on, said Kuppalli. One reason the previous outbreak was so deadly was that the virus wasn’t detected quickly and local authorities and the international community were slow to act when cases first popped up in a rural part of Guinea. The epidemic’s initial patient, an 18-month-old boy from a small village, was believed to have been infected by bats, but after the case was reported in December 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it was weeks before a medical alert was issued and by then the virus had already spread and it took years to end it. The new cases announced Sunday are in the Nzerekore region, the same place where the previous one started.