Two new cases of Ebola have emerged from the
same Liberian community where the virus
resurged the other week, the acting head of the
country's Ebola Case Management Team said
Thursday.
Dr. Francis Kateh said the number of confirmed
Ebola cases has risen to five, including the 17-
year-old teen who died of the disease on June
28. The latest patients, a boy and a girl, were
brought to a treatment centre Wednesday from
the same Nedowein community where the teen
died.
All four confirmed patients are at a treatment
centre near Monrovia, Dr. Kateh said.
He said 120 people have been quarantined, and
that 14 who are considered active "high risk"
contacts are being monitored.
The last recorded case in Liberia before this
latest emergence was March 20, according to the
World Health Organization, which had declared
the country free from transmission on May 9.
Tests are being done to help determine the mode
of transmission to the teenager. He first became
ill June 21 and went to a local health facility
where he was treated for malaria and
discharged, WHO has said.
Experts had warned that Ebola remained a threat
to West Africa until it is eradicated from Guinea
and Sierra Leone where it stubbornly hangs on.
In Sierra Leone, the government said Wednesday
a curfew would extend in Ebola-affected areas.
Sierra Leone recently recorded 10 new confirmed
Ebola cases, focused in the east of Freetown.
"Sierra Leone continues to try and eradicate
Ebola from its last remaining districts and has
implemented two deliberate operations in which
to achieve this," the CEO of the National Ebola
Response Center, Maj. Alfred Palo Conteh, said
earlier this week.
The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 11,200
people, mostly in West Africa.
Associated Press writer Clarence Roy-Macaulay
in Freetown, Sierra Leone contributed to this
report.
No comments:
Post a Comment