The biological analysis can be achieved henceforth quickly,” he told Time magazine this week, referring to the ongoing epidemiological operation.
Perhaps most important, public health officials continue to
disseminate messages to the people of Guinea to avoid confusion about
how the disease spreads.
Sakoba Keita, who’s leading the government’s ebola prevention efforts, says the limited outbreak remains dangerous.
Near the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
the deadly infectious disease first emerged in 1976, simultaneously
striking Sudan.
Yet after nearly two generations, epidemiologists have
developed no cure for the highly fatal disease, formerly known as Ebola
haemorrhagic fever.
The pathogen leaps from animals in the wild to human
populations in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests — and
is then spread rapidly from person to person.
The disease is
transmitted through direct contact with blood and tissue of infected
animals or people, with the greatest risk for infection incurred by
health workers fighting the disease.
Although no vaccine yet exists for ebola in animals or
humans, the world health community fought the infection this month with
3.5 tons of medical supplies sent to Conakry, the capital of Guinea for
distribution by WHO officials.
Those supplies included disposable
protective clothing for health workers, as well as hazmat-secure burial
material for the infected dead.
“With protection equipment, we feel reassured and can do
our job to help patients,” said Dr. Lansana Kourouma, head of emergency
care at the Chinese-Guinean Friendship Hospital, where five patients
remained under observation this week. WHO said the country Senegal had
also sent technicians to the hospital to conduct on-site rapid testing
for the disease.
International health officials continue to meet daily with
Guinea’s national crisis committee to coordinate disease surveillance,
clinical management, logistics, and social mobilization, WHO’s Dr. Rene
Zitsamele-Coddy said in a press release.
“As soon as the outbreak was confirmed on March 21, we started to work
with [Guinea officials] and other partners to implement necessary
measures,” she said. ”It is the first time the country is facing an
Ebola outbreak, so WHO expertise in the area is valuable.”
Sixty-nine people have died since January of Ebola in the West African country of Guinea with 109 cases now confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
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