PH
Four people have died of Ebola in Guinea, the first resurgence of the haemorrhagic fever in the West African nation since a 2013-2016 epidemic left thousands dead, Health Minister Remy Lamah said Saturday.
“We are really concerned,” Lamah said.
“There have already been four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever in the (southeast) region of Nzerekore”, the minister added.
Keita also told local media that one patient had “escaped” but had been found and hospitalised in the capital Conakry. He confirmed the comments to AFP without giving further detail.
The World Health Organization has eyed each new outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the most recent one in the Democratic Republic of Congo as an international health emergency.
DR Congo has faced several outbreak of the illness, with the WHO on Thursday confirming a resurgence three months after authorities declared the end of the country’s latest outbreak.
The country had declared that the six-month epidemic over in November. It was the country’s eleventh Ebola outbreak, claiming 55 lives out of 130 cases.
The widespread use of vaccinations, which were administered to more than 40,000 people, helped curb the disease.
The 2013-2016 outbreak sped up the development of a vaccine against Ebola, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.
