Côte d’Ivoire affected by first confirmed case of Ebola virus – franceinfo

Worry in Ivory Coast. A case of the Ebola virus has been detected, the first for nearly 30 years in this neighboring country of Guinea, which was hard hit from 2013 to 2016 and where the virus reappeared in 2021, the Ivorian Minister of Health announced on Saturday August 14, Pierre N’Gou Demba.

Ivorian health authorities “were informed this day [samedi] by the Pasteur Institute of a case of Ebola virus disease after examination of the samples taken “ Friday “on an 18-year-old girl of Guinean nationality”Minister Pierre N’Gou Demba told RTI national television. He specified that this young girl had left the town of Labé in Guinea by road and “arrived in Côte d’Ivoire on August 11”, before being picked up in Abidjan.

According to the Ivorian Minister of Health, this infection is “an isolated and imported case”, and Côte d’Ivoire has vaccines against Ebola. The country “will carry out the vaccination of the target groups, the nursing staff who have been in immediate contact with the patient and the security forces who are at our borders”.

The World Health Organization (WHO) considers it “extremely worrying” this case detected in Côte d’Ivoire. “There is no evidence that the case detected in Côte d’Ivoire is linked to the recent epidemic outbreak which affected Guinea”, however estimates the WHO in a press release, which confirmed the delivery of 5,000 doses of the anti-Ebola vaccine to Côte d’Ivoire.

According to the WHO, this is the first confirmed case of Ebola since 1994 in Côte d’Ivoire. In Guinea, the end of the second Ebola epidemic was officially announced on June 19, a few months after the reappearance of this disease which killed thousands of people between 2013 and 2016.