Guinea’s Ebola outbreak comes to an end
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the end of the Ebola transmission in Guinea. “The criteria put in place by the World Health Organisation to declare the end of all known Ebola virus transmissions in Guinea are met. The Ebola virus epidemic is over”.
“The coming months will be absolutely critical”, said Dr Bruce Aylward from the WHO’s Ebola response team. Ebola transmission is deemed to have ended once 42 consecutive days have passed since the recovery or death of the last patient, without any new infections arising.
The deadly virus has killed 2,536 people in Guinea since the outbreak began in December of 2013 in Gueckedou, a southern town near the borders of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a severe, often fatal disease in humans and non-human primates.
But Amesh Adalja, a senior associate at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Health Security, said the fact that transmission had been re-established after the country had been declared Ebola-free has several implications.
Since the beginning of the outbreak UNICEF has provided much needed supplies, deploying social mobilizers to educate communities, providing water and sanitation, supporting orphans and other affected children and ensuring that all girls and boys could continue their education.
“To be honest, the real heroes were the doctors and nurses, both military and civilian, out there who dealt with the Ebola victims face to face on a daily basis, in searing heat and cramped conditions, literally putting their lives on the line all the time”, he said. If the government and foreign partners succeeded in beating this disease, I can only thank God. I want to commend the governments, health care workers and people of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for fighting back bravely and successfully against the world’s first Ebola epidemic.
The UN’s health agency on Tuesday declared Guinea’s Ebola outbreak over two years after it emerged, spreading death across west Africa and pushing the region’s worst-hit communities to the brink of collapse. Guinea now enters a 90-day period of heightened surveillance to make sure the disease doesn’t return.
Scientists are closely monitoring the virus and warn that Ebola can lie dormant and hide in parts of the body such as the eyes and testicles, and rare cases of the virus re-emerging have been reported.
“You had people who were dancing”, she says, quoting another colleague who is in Guinea. To put Ebola into perspective, for every one person who died from Ebola hundreds die from malaria.
Ebola transmission was declared over in Sierra Leone on Nov 7.
Noubia’s prognosis last month means her home country has officially turned a very big corner in the fight against Ebola. “Let us commit to be with them too”.