Four people have died in the first outbreak of the disease in five years from Ebola in Guinea, the health minister said on Saturday.
Remy Lamah told AFP officials they were “really concerned” about the deaths, the first since an epidemic in 2013-’16 – which began in Guinea – killed 11,300 people across the region.
One of the youngest victims in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill at the end of January and was buried on February 1, Sakoba Keita, head of the National Health Safety Agency, told local media. “Among those who attended the funeral, eight people showed symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding,” he said. “Three of them are dead and four others are in the hospital.”
The four deaths due to Ebola hemorrhage occurred in the southeastern region of Nzerekore, he said.
Keita also told local media that one patient “escaped” but was found and hospitalized in the capital Conakry. He confirmed the comments to AFP without giving further details.
The World Health Organization has viewed each new outbreak since 2016 with great concern and considers the most recent in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to be an international emergency.
DRC has faced several outbreaks of the disease, while the WHO on Thursday confirmed a resurgence three months after the government declared the end of the country’s latest outbreak.
The country declared the six-month epidemic in November. It was the country’s eleventh Ebola outbreak, with 55 lives out of 130 cases.
The widespread use of vaccinations, which has been administered to more than 40,000 people, has helped combat the disease.
The 2013-’16 outbreak accelerated the development of a vaccine against Ebola, with a worldwide emergency supply of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.