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Health officials in Guinea are rushing to contain a new Ebola outbreak that has killed at least four people and raised concerns across West Africa, which had previously suffered the most from the virus.
On Monday morning, a fourth victim died in Guinea and four others are being treated in an isolation center, suffering from vomiting, diarrhea and bleeding. At least seven of those who contracted the virus attended a funeral for a nurse in Goueke, a town near the Liberian border, on February 1, the government said on Sunday.
“All measures are being taken to contain this epidemic as quickly as possible,” said the Guinean Ministry of Health, declaring an outbreak of the virus last seen in the region in 2016 – at the end of a traumatic outbreak of three years, which infected more than 28,000 people and caused 11,000 deaths in West Africa.
The epidemic has spread from Guinea to Liberia, Sierra Leone and other countries in the region, triggering important and life-saving prevention, treatment and surveillance systems in several countries, which officials say health, were immediately alerted to contain the epidemic in Guinea. An intensive campaign of tests and traceability has started in Goueke and in neighboring towns.
The vaccinations and treatments that have been developed in recent years were rapidly being rolled out in Guinea and were on hold in neighboring Liberia and other countries in West Africa, the World Health Organization said, adding the hope that an epidemic could be contained.
“There is a real concern and a challenge to maintain and strengthen Guinea’s health systems,” said Georges Ki-Zerbo, the head of the WHO mission in Guinea, “but also there are many strengthening and regional cooperation. In the field, there are dozens of respondents already mobilized.
The specter of an Ebola outbreak emerging as countries battled Covid-19 was also of acute concern, Ki-Zerbo said, as resources were depleted. In some places, the response to the pandemic has also been a boon. “The alert and vigilance provided by Covid should also help fight Ebola, which is easier to detect,” he said.
Yet an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as the country struggles to contain coronavirus cases as the conflict escalates, has sounded alarm bells. Four cases of Ebola have been detected as efforts to combat the epidemic are hampered by conflict between armed groups. Kate Moger, regional head of the International Rescue Committee, said the Ebola cases were a disaster for communities in northern DRC. “They have faced decades of violence from armed groups and are now facing, between Ebola and Covid-19, disease outbreaks for almost three years in a row.”
Following the cases in Guinea, health officials in West Africa have expressed a mixture of growing concern, but also some confidence that a major outbreak could be averted. Significant progress has been made in improving the capacity of health systems in small, low-income countries like Guinea in West Africa to cope with viral epidemics such as Ebola, Lassa fever, Fever yellow and more recently Covid-19, said Ki-Zerbo.
On Sunday, Liberia, which shares a porous border with Guinea, announced that its health systems would be on alert for potential cases.
Heounohu Romello Hessou, a doctor and senior official in the country’s Covid-19 response, worked in Liberia during the Ebola outbreak and said measures had started quickly since the first cases were announced in Guinea and that an intensive test and traceability system was underway. in neighboring Liberian border towns.
“At present, the entire public health institute, essentially born out of the Ebola epidemic, is working 24 hours a day, sending investigation teams, implementing public health measures in border towns of Guinea ”, he declared.
“Ring vaccinations” were being implemented, where vaccines to prevent and treat Ebola would be given to all known contacts of infected people, he said, with the possibility of widespread testing available.
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