Four dead in new Ebola outbreak in Guinea-Conakry

A health worker checks his protective gear in Kailahun, Sierra Leone in August 2014 during the West African Ebola outbreak.CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

The health authorities of Guinea-Conakry declared this Saturday a new Ebola outbreak in the Nzérékoré region, the same one where the 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa began, which ended up becoming the worst in history with 28,500 cases and more than 11,300 dead.

For now, there are eight confirmed infections and four deaths from the new outbreak, all of them linked to a burial that took place on February 1 in Gouéké, in the southeast of the country and near the border with Liberia and the Ivory Coast.

"We are very concerned, there are already four dead," Rémy Lamah, Guinean Minister of Health, told France Press agency on Saturday.

The first possible case is that of a health worker who fell ill at the end of January and died between 27 and 28 of last month.

His burial took place in Gouéké on February 1.

Eight people who participated in the burial began to present symptoms compatible with Ebola a few days later, such as vomiting, diarrhea and internal bleeding.

Three of them died and the other five are hospitalized, four in Nzérékoré and the last in the capital, Conakry.

The samples from these eight patients were analyzed in a laboratory set up by the European Union in Guéckédou, in the same region of Nzérékoré, and all tested positive for Ebola, according to the director of the National Health Security Agency, Sakoba. Keita.

"We have taken all the appropriate measures, a team is already on the ground to identify the contacts," added Lamah, "it worries me as a human being, but I am calm because we have managed the first epidemic and vaccination is possible."

This Sunday a first meeting of a crisis cell was scheduled to be held.

The director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, assured on Saturday through his Twitter account that he is already working with the country's authorities in preparing the response to this outbreak, the first to occur. in West Africa after the deadly epidemic of 2014-2016.

At that time the disease was detected in the Guéckédou area and affected six countries in the region, Guinea-Conakry itself, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Mali and Senegal, the latter with a single imported case.

The contagion of missionaries and humanitarian workers caused the first cases outside Africa in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy and Spain.

The regional director of the WHO, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, expressed her concern this Sunday also through her Twitter account: “WHO is increasing its preparedness and response efforts to contain this possible reappearance of Ebola in West Africa, a region that he suffered so many hardships in 2014, "he said.

These infections in Guinea-Conakry occur a week after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) declared a re-outbreak in North Kivu of the epidemic that affected this area between August 2018 and June 2020 and which already has three contagions and two deceased persons.

In this case, the alert was triggered by a farmer, wife of an Ebola survivor, who went to a health center in the Butembo area with symptoms on February 1 and died two days later.

The second identified case also corresponds to a peasant woman who died on February 10, while the third contagion was declared in Katwa this Saturday.

There are about 200 identified contacts of which at least 110 are under surveillance.

Both in Congo and now in Guinea-Conakry, one of the most important strategies to combat the spread of the epidemic is vaccination, a tool that did not exist at the beginning of the 2014 epidemic and that has proven its effectiveness in subsequent outbreaks.

In the DRC 1,500 doses have already been sent to the Butembo area to begin vaccinating contacts and health personnel.

Despite recent advances in its treatment, Ebola is a disease that continues to have high fatality rates and that originates from a contagion between an animal and a human being.

Its main reservoir is believed to be various species of fruit bats present in large areas of Africa and that deforestation is one of the causes of repeated outbreaks in recent years.