{"id":24007,"date":"2016-03-19T04:27:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T04:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/guinea-on-high-alert-as-two-die-of-ebola\/"},"modified":"2016-03-19T04:25:05","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T04:25:05","slug":"guinea-on-high-alert-as-two-die-of-ebola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/guinea-on-high-alert-as-two-die-of-ebola\/","title":{"rendered":"Guinea on high alert as two die of Ebola"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Two people have died from Ebola in Guinea, as the World Health Organisation declared a flare-up of the virus in neighbouring Sierra Leone.}<\/p>\n

\u201cTest samples from the two revealed the presence of the Ebola haemorrhagic fever virus\u201d, the government said in a statement, while officials feared more suspected cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor now, there are two confirmed cases and three suspected cases,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

The cases are the first in Guinea since the country was declared Ebola free at the end of last year, and the UN health agency warned that a recurrence of the tropical disease \u2014 which has claimed 11,300 lives since December 2013 \u2014 remained a possibility.<\/p>\n

Two cases of the virus were identified in Sierra Leone in early January, the first cases since November last year.<\/p>\n

A 22-year-old woman died while her aunt survived.<\/p>\n

WHO declared that flare-up officially over on Thursday after no new cases were seen for 42 days \u2014 the length of two Ebola incubation cycles.<\/p>\n

WHO refers to these isolated cases as \u201cflare-ups\u201d but maintains the original chains of transmission have been stopped in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWHO continues to stress that Sierra Leone, as well as Liberia and Guinea, are still at risk of Ebola flare-ups, largely due to virus persistence in some survivors, and must remain on high alert and ready to respond,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The health agency\u2019s representative in Sierra Leone, Anders Nordstrom, said it was critical that everybody remained prepared.<\/p>\n

The virus can stay in semen for at least nine months after a patient has recovered, six months longer than previously thought.<\/p>\n

Scientists are working to establish how long it can persist in other bodily fluids and tissues such as the spinal column and the eye, and for how long it could remain infectious.<\/p>\n

PEAK OF THE OUTBREAK<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil the virus is cleared from the survivor population \u2014 and that may take the remainder of the year or more \u2014 we have to anticipate and be prepared for additional small outbreaks,\u201d a WHO representative told journalists.<\/p>\n

All five of the new cases in Guinea were from the town of Korokpara in the southern region of Nzerekore.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe health authorities have taken the appropriate measures to contain the spread of the disease,\u201d the statement added.<\/p>\n

A source close to the local anti-Ebola coordination team told AFP that the dead were a married couple who had shown symptoms of vomiting and diarrhoea.
\n\u201cThat attracted the attention of locals who alerted the health services in Nzerekore,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Although the outbreak \u2014 the worst on record \u2014 has officially claimed more than 11,300 lives since it first began in Guinea, a significant number of deaths are believed to have gone unreported.<\/p>\n

The epidemic was first reported to have spread to Sierra Leone in May 2014, when more than a dozen women contracted Ebola at the funeral of a healer who had been treating patients from Guinea.<\/p>\n

At the peak of the outbreak that year, Sierra Leone and its neighbours Liberia and Guinea were reporting hundreds of new cases each week, with social order on the brink of collapse.<\/p>\n

The WHO declared Guinea Ebola-free on December 29, followed by Liberia on January 14.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Two people have died from Ebola in Guinea, as the World Health Organisation declared a flare-up of the virus in neighbouring Sierra Leone.} \u201cTest samples from the two revealed the presence of the Ebola haemorrhagic fever virus\u201d, the government said in a statement, while officials feared more suspected cases. \u201cFor now, there are two confirmed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[100],"byline":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","tag-africa","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24007"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24007"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}