Concerns about the new Ebola scare in Sierra Leone has the head of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) flying to that nation.
The report of the trip comes on the heels of Sierra Leone officials admitting they have two more new cases of the virus connected to the first victim who died last week.
“We now know where the virus is and we are tracking its movement, by surrounding, containing and eradicating its last remaining chain of transmission,” ational Ebola Response Centre’s OB Sisay said.
CDC Head Dr. Tom Frieden reportedly will help assess the situation and provide advice on steps needed to control the new outbreak.
Officials say the problem with controlling the virus early is that the initial symptom of fever is similar to that of other diseases such as malaria and typhoid. That would lead some folks who have Ebola to not seek treatment or isolate themselves because they don’t know they have the deadly virus.
The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 11,200 people worldwide although the overwhelming number of deaths were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
Virologists made a scary new discovery in the investigation of the Ebola outbreak in Guinea.
It’s a new strain of the virus.
Researchers say that the discovery means that the outbreak has no connection to any previous outbreak in Africa. Ebola has a pattern of outbreak in the western parts of the country and the surprise outbreak in east Africa caught many health officials by surprise.
The scientists say that the new virus has been confirmed to have the same unknown ancestor of the western viruses. They say the virus likely was introduced into the region in December 2013.
The virus was also found in fruit bats within the region and it’s possible that the virus had mutated within the bats.
The virologists say that the new strain could be a potential catastrophe among the region as the area has never experienced a major Ebola outbreak until now.
The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa is growing into more of a concern for world leaders.
Mali reported their first possible cases of Ebola since the beginning of an outbreak in neighboring Guinea. Government officials have isolated three people in Mali as they await confirmation testing from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Guinea reported their 90th death from the outbreak leading Doctors Without Borders to say this could become an unprecedented epidemic in a region that has extremely poor health care systems.
The outbreak has reached a point that foreign mining companies in Guinea have closed their operations and pulled their employees to their home nations. French officials say they are preparing screening at the airports for travels from the former French colonies.
In addition to Guinea, confirmed cases have been found in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia confirmed three new deaths in the last 24 hours bringing their total to four.
DWB officials are concerned with the dense living conditions in cities where the virus has been found because it will be hard to stop the virus should it break out in a crowded living area.
Attempts to control a deadly virus in Guinea appear to be failing as the outbreak continues to spread.
Three cases of hemorrhagic fever cases in Guinea’s capital of Conakry were negative for Ebola, however, doctors have not been able to determine the cause of the infections that have killed two of the three hospitalized victims.
Guinea has been facing a massive outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, which kills up to 90 percent of those infected. World Health Organization officials have isolated three rural villages in an attempt to keep the virus from spreading.
At least 60 deaths have been confirmed from Ebola. The total does not include deaths in rural villages where the villagers did not report the illness of a family member or buried them before they could be tested for the virus.
Health officials fear the quarantine of the areas will fail because locals are afraid of the virus and fleeing rural towns for the nation’s capital city.
There is no treatment or vaccine available for Ebola. The most recent epidemic occurred in 2012 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and killed 62 people.
