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Four people have died from Ebola in Guinea in the disease’s first resurgence in five years, the health minister said on Saturday.
Rémy Lamah told AFP officials were “really concerned” by the deaths, the first since a 2013-16 epidemic – which started in Guinea – killed 11,300 in the region.
One of the latest victims in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill in late January and was buried on February 1, head of the National Health Security Agency, Sakoba Keita, told local media. “Of those who attended the funeral, eight people showed symptoms: diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding,” he said. “Three of them died and four more are in the hospital.”
The four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever occurred in the southeastern region of Nzerekore, he said.
Keita also told local media that a patient had “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 watched each new outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the most recent in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as an international health emergency.
The DRC has been facing several outbreaks of the disease, with WHO confirming a resurgence on Thursday three months after authorities declared the country’s latest outbreak over.
The country declared the end of the six-month epidemic in November. It was the 11th Ebola outbreak in the country, killing 55 out of 130 cases.
The widespread use of vaccines, which have been administered to more than 40,000 people, has helped curb the disease.
The 2013-16 outbreak accelerated the development of an Ebola vaccine, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the Gavi vaccine alliance said in January.
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