Guinea records first deaths from Ebola since 2016

World

Published: 2021-02-14 12:54

Last Updated: 2024-03-28 16:42


Guinea records first deaths from Ebola since 2016
Guinea records first deaths from Ebola since 2016

Saturday according to the Guinean Minister of Health Remy Lamah, four people have died in the country due to Ebola in the first outbreak of this disease in five years in the west African country.

Lamah told AFP that officials are "very concerned" about the deaths, noting that these deaths are the first ones since the outbreak of the pandemic that began in Guinea between 2013 and 2016 and resulted in 11,300 deaths across the region at the time.

The head of the National Health Security Agency, Sakuba Keita, told Guinean media that the latest victim was a nurse who contracted the virus in late January and was buried Feb. 1. 

"Among those who participated in the burial, eight people showed symptoms of diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding," he said, noting that "three of them died and four were receiving treatment in hospital."

He said the four deaths from Ebola occurred in the southeastern Nzirikor region.

Keita told local media that one of the patients "escaped" but was found and taken to hospital in the capital, Conakry.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has viewed with grave concern every new outbreak since 2016, and has dealt with the latest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as an international health emergency.

Sunday, the DRC announced the emergence of the Ebola virus once more in the east of the country, after the death of a woman as a result of the disease, three months after announcing the end of the previous wave of the epidemic.

On Nov. 18, 2020, the authorities in the country announced the end of the eleventh wave of the Ebola virus in the province of Equator, northwest of DRC, which resulted in the death of 55 people out of 130 cases.

The widespread availability of vaccines that have been given to more than 40,000 people has helped reduce the disease.

The Gavi Vaccine Alliance said the outbreak that occurred between 2013 and 2016 accelerated the development of an Ebola vaccine, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses to quickly respond to any future outbreak of the disease.