EpidemicsGuinea Ebola outbreak spreading to Liberia, threatening Sierra Leone

Artist's rendering of the Ebola virus // Source: teruskan.com

The Ebola outbreak in Guinea – the biggest in Africa in seven years — has spread to neighboring Liberia and is now also threatening Sierra Leone.

Mali and Ivory Coast issued calls for vigilance to prevent the disease from spreading across their borders. The two countries border Guinea along with Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal. The Guardian reports that five people have died from the disease in Lofa county in northern Liberia.

At least eighty-six cases and fifty-nine deaths have been recorded across Guinea, the West African country’s health ministry said Monday. The UN Children’s Fund said the outbreak had spread to the capital, Conakry, although most of the cases so far have been in the country’s south-east provinces.

“The forest region where UNICEF delivered the emergency assistance on Saturday is located along the border with Sierra Leone and Liberia with many people doing business and moving between the three countries,” said Laurent Duvillier, a UNICEF spokesman. “Risk of international spread should be taken serio Bloomberg reports that UNICEF plans to dispatch five metric tons of aid, including medical supplies, to the worst-affected areas, mostly concentrated in Guinea’s southeast border areas.

“The three cases, which were registered in Conakry, have no link with Ebola,” Guinea government spokesman Albert Damantang Camara said. “The analyses were made abroad. The outbreak of the disease may be heavier than 59 but the health ministry will release a statement on the disease soon.”

‘Particularly Devastating’

The World Health Organization (WHO) said there is no record of earlier Ebola outbreaks in Guinea, and that the disease is more prevalent in central African countries such as Congo.

Dr. Esther Sterk, tropical disease adviser for Doctors Without Borders, noted that the only prior case of a human contracting the virus in west Africa came in 1994, when a scientist fell ill while responding to Ebola cases among chimpanzees in a national park in Ivory Coast. The scientist eventually recovered.

Guinea, one of the poorest countries in Africa, does not have the medical infrastructure t deal with such outbreaks, and medical staff lacks to proper training, as evidenced by the fact that at least eight Guinean health-care workers who were in contact with infected patients have died.

“This outbreak is particularly devastating because medical staff are among the first victims,” UNICEF said.

There is no specific treatment or vaccine for Ebola, and the key to prevent a major outbreak is to limit infections.

Supplies delivered over the weekend are being distributed to health-care workers, Timothy La Rose, a UNICEF spokesman, told Blookmberg.

“We are focusing on prevention,” La Rose said. “We are alerting the public on how to avoid contracting Ebola. Since there is no treatment, this is the best way to stop the spread.”

WHO notes that the Ebola virus is transmitted through contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected person or a wild animal. It was first identified in 1976 in Congo and Sudan, when two different strains of the virus killed 431 of the 602 people infected.

WHO said that recent Ebola outbreaks have occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012 and in Uganda in 2011.

Health officials have not yet been able to determine the subtype of Ebola infecting people in Guinea. Knowing the subtype would give them a better idea of the fatality rate, Sterk said. The fatality rate for Ebola can range from 25 to -90 percent.