GENEVA:
Guinea's Ebola outbreak is under control, but the death toll could rise
above the current 74 because sick patients remain in hospital, the
president said Wednesday.
"For the moment the
situation is well in hand, and we touch wood that there won't be any new
cases," President Alpha Conde told reporters during a visit to Geneva,
home of the World Health Organization (WHO).
However he
warned that with a number of people still in hospital suspected to be
suffering from the deadly virus, the death toll may yet rise.
"There haven't been any new cases. But of those who remain in quarantine, there certainly will be some who will die," he said.
Working
with the UN health agency and aid groups, Guinea remains on high alert
against the virus, an incurable disease that can kill up to 90 percent
of its victims.
On Tuesday, the health ministry said that
74 people had died so far this year in one of the worst ever outbreaks
of the virus, with 121 confirmed cases. A larger number of people have
been diagnosed with haemorrhagic fever, but not all those cases have
been confirmed as Ebola.
No new cases have been recorded
since Sunday, although four people are receiving treatment in the
capital Conakry, and six in Gueckedou, in the south, which has seen one
of the most serious outbreaks.
There is no vaccine or cure
for Ebola, which can be caught from handling the blood or the bodily
fluids of sick or dead forest animals.
Researchers in the
United States have confirmed that the Guinea outbreak began after
contact with bats caught for their meat in the country's southern
forests, Conde noted.
It then spread in the hunters'
communities and to health workers who initially failed to identify the
risk posed by feverish patients.
To try and limit the
outbreak, the government has advised Guineans to stop eating bats and
avoid other "bush meat" when possible, and has also striven to apply
infection-control measures by monitoring potential cases and those they
have come into contact with.
The disease has spread to
neighbouring Liberia, with suspected cases reported in Mali and Sierra
Leone sparking fears it could spread throughout the region.
But
in a sign of subsiding concerns, Senegal, which had closed its border
with Guinea, reopened the frontier on Tuesday, Conde said.
The
WHO has described the outbreak as one of the most challenging since the
virus emerged in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ebola
leads to haemorrhagic fever, causing muscle pain, weakness, vomiting,
diarrhoea and, in severe cases, organ failure and unstoppable bleeding.
There
is no vaccine or cure for the virus, which can easily spread among
humans through contact with infected blood, bodily fluids and tissue.
Its
spread can be stopped only by isolating suspected cases in ultra-clean
conditions and quarantining those who have been in contact with them.
