The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday August 17 that in addition to the confirmed case of Ebola contamination detected in Côte d'Ivoire, one suspected case and nine contact cases had been identified and were being followed up.

“Regarding the numbers, there are two cases. One that has been confirmed - a young woman - and there is also a suspected case,” WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said in a statement. press briefing in Geneva.

"There are currently nine identified contact cases," he added.

The case of Ebola hemorrhagic fever contamination was detected on Saturday in Abidjan in an 18-year-old Guinean who arrived in Côte d'Ivoire on August 11 from the Guinean city of Labé (north), a journey of more than 1,500 km traveled by road.

Vaccination

The patient is currently undergoing treatment in a hospital in Abidjan, while an operation to vaccinate health sector workers against the Ebola virus began on Monday.

Residents of a district of the Ivorian economic capital, where the young Guinean stayed, were vaccinated Tuesday, according to AFP journalists.

"We know that the patient stayed here before going to the hospital, so all the people around who are the contact cases had to be vaccinated," said Pierre Demba, the Ivorian Minister of Health.

The minister said he expected "to reach 2,000 contact persons within the next few days", those who had traveled with the infected young woman and those who had been in contact with these travelers.

In addition, the search for contact cases of this young Guinean continues in her region of origin in Guinea.

It is precisely in Forest Guinea that the 2021 epidemic was triggered, but also the one that struck West Africa between the end of 2013 and 2016 and which killed more than 11,300 people, mainly in Guinea. (2,500 dead), in Liberia and Sierra Leone, three of the poorest countries in the world.

An undervalued balance sheet by the WHO's own admission.

Zaire strain

The WHO has deemed "extremely worrying" that the case detected in Côte d'Ivoire has occurred in Abidjan, a metropolis of more than four million inhabitants, two months after the announcement of the end of the epidemic of 2021 in Guinea.

"Regarding the first investigations on the genetic sequence of the Ebola virus which was identified in Abidjan, for the moment we have no indication that this outbreak in Côte d'Ivoire has a link with the Ebola epidemic that raged in Guinea earlier this year, "Tarik Jasarevic noted.

"We need to do further laboratory investigations to find out if there is a link with any previous epidemic," he added.

The spokesperson, however, clarified that the first results show "that it is probably the Zaire strain of the virus", namely the subtype of Ebola virus which plagued Guinea this year as well as during the great epidemic in West Africa.

With AFP

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