Guinea: the first doses of Ebola vaccine have arrived
Audio 01:17
Several thousand doses of vaccine against Ebola disease arrived in Guinea on Monday, February 22, 2021. © RFI / Carol Valade
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
In Guinea, the WHO Ebola vaccines finally arrived in Conakry on Monday evening after a long journey.
Originally scheduled for Sunday, the flight was delayed due to bad weather conditions.
11,360 doses of Merck vaccine have therefore arrived.
Publicity
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With our correspondent in Conakry
,
Carol Valade
On the tarmac at Conakry airport, it is around 8 p.m. when a small propeller plane pierces the mist.
On board,
11,300 doses of Merck vaccine
, already used to contain the
Ebola
virus
in the DRC.
These thousands of doses must be used to contain the spread of the virus, the resurgence of which, at the start of the year, claimed the lives of 5 people.
“
In the boxes it is the vaccines against Ebola, the Merck vaccine more precisely, which arrived this evening.
They were supposed to arrive yesterday but unfortunately for climatic reasons, the plane could not land so it took the intervention of many personalities for this plane to be there this evening to drop off these vaccines which were so awaited
”, explains, relieved, Dr Sakoba Keïta, Director General of the National Agency for Health Security.
Cause of the delay: a thick dust in suspension for a few days in the atmosphere of Conakry.
As the initial flight failed to land on Sunday, the mining logistics company UMS organized a last-minute return trip to Dakar.
"
The next step is that the vaccines will be deployed on the ground in the theater of the response to operations in Nzérékoré tomorrow and in all the sites where they will be needed to protect the contacts of patients and thus surround the spread. of this epidemic which concerns not only Guinea, but also neighboring countries
”, explains Georges Ki-Zerbo, WHO representative in Guinea
The vaccination campaign in Gouecké,
epicenter of the epidemic
, in Nzérékoré, the regional capital, as well as in Conakry, where a patient is hospitalized, began on Tuesday.
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Ebola
Guinea
Health and medicine
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