Guinea is battling a new Ebola outbreak, health officials in the West African country said on Sunday, with at least three deaths in a region that was once the starting point for the world’s worst epidemic.
The three who died – two women and one man – were among seven people who fell ill with symptoms such as diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding after attending a nurse’s funeral in the southeastern country on February 1, the Ministry of Health said in a statement. .
Authorities confirmed an outbreak on Sunday after a laboratory found the virus in the patients’ first three tested samples.
“The government assures people that all measures are being taken to contain this epidemic as quickly as possible,” Guinea’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday in a Facebook post.
The government asked people to report any other symptoms to health officials and to follow hygiene and prevention measures. He also said he would speed up the delivery of vaccines in the region and open a center to deal with the detected cases.
The resurgence comes at a time when West Africa is still battling the coronavirus pandemic and after the Democratic Republic of Congo has also discovered new cases of Ebola, three months after health officials said they had eradicated the latest outbreak in Congo. .
Guinea has not seen an Ebola case since 2016, when an epidemic that began in its southeastern region in 2014 came to an end. This outbreak, the deadliest so far, has spread to neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone, infecting more than 28,000 people in 10 countries and killing more than 11,000.
Since then, however, researchers have found new vaccines, treatments and rapid diagnostic tests, as well as new ways to respond to outbreaks.
“Given these new tools, in addition to the fact that qualified Guinean health professionals, who already have experience in responding to Ebola, are in place, we hope to be able to control this outbreak quickly,” Nicolas Mouly, manager of the emergency response program at Alliance for International Medical Action, said in a statement.
The alarm went off much faster than in the 2014-2016 outbreak. Local health professionals identified the case group and the contact tracker teams were quickly reinforced.
“Many lessons have been learned, including the need to involve communities from the start,” said Dr. Georges Ki-Zerbo, head of the World Health Organization in Guinea. This includes traditional healers, who are often the first port of call for people in rural Guinea seeking treatment for diseases.
The first person known to have died in this outbreak is a nurse, but that does not necessarily mean that she was the index case. Contact trackers will try to find out how she contracted the disease.
“It is not uncommon in Ebola cases to have health professionals in the first cases to be reported,” said Ki-Zerbo. “It is important to know under what circumstances she may have been infected.”
Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, regional director of the World Health Organization for Africa, said Sunday on Twitter that she was “very concerned” about Guinea’s reports and that the agency was “increasing readiness and efforts to respond to this potential resurgence”.
Spread by contact with body fluids or secretions from an infected or recently deceased person, the Ebola virus causes hemorrhagic fever with an average death rate of about half, although two vaccines are available against it.
The vaccines are being prepared for shipment to Guinea and should arrive in the coming days.
Vaccines are not intended for routine use and therefore are not automatically administered to people living in rural Guinea, said Dr. Ki-Zerbo. Instead, when an outbreak occurs, they are targeted at the population living in a given area.
Isabella Kwai reported from London and Ruth Maclean from Dakar, Senegal. Anna Holland contributed reports.