Guinea News

Guinea today declared the end of the Marburg virus disease outbreak having recorded no new cases over the past 42 days—two incubation periods, or the time between infection and the onset of symptoms. The virus was confirmed on 9 August, marking the first time the disease emerged in the country and in West Africa.

When a man in Temessadou M’Boket – a village in the densely forested southern Guinea region – died in early August 2021 after suffering fever, headache and haemorrhage, a medical team was quickly dispatched, and within hours of his death, laboratory analysis revealed that he had been ill with Marburg.

Health authorities in Guinea today confirmed a case of Marburg virus disease in the southern Gueckedou prefecture. This is the first time Marburg, a highly infectious disease that causes haemorrhagic fever, has been identified in the country, and in West Africa.

The Ebola outbreak that erupted in Guinea in early 2021 was declared over on 19 June, just four months after the first cases were confirmed in a rural community in the south of the country. Banking on the lessons learned from the deadly 2014–2016 outbreak as well as a growing national expertise, a prompt response was mounted, helping to curb widespread infection. Minister of Health Honourable Dr Rémy Lamah explains what it took to halt the virus and the challenges met.

It is a quiet morning at an Ebola treatment centre in the outskirts of N’zerekore, a town in the south-east of Guinea. The centre’s triage and reception areas are all empty, and medical staff are relaxed and jovial as they tend to a small handful of patients or catch up on some administrative tasks in the office.

The Ebola outbreak that emerged in Guinea in mid-February was declared over today. It was the first time the disease resurfaced in the country since the deadly outbreak in West Africa that ended in 2016.

In the small village of Sinkolé in the densely-forested south-east of Guinea, scores of men and women gather outside a ramshackle community hall on a Friday morning. Marius Djo, a World Health Organization (WHO) advisor on Prevention of Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (PSEA), waits for everyone to take a seat on old wooden school benches arranged in a rough semi-circle, then he begins an animated introduction.

On a sultry morning in early March in the small town of Gouécké in south-eastern Guinea, scores of concerned community and customary leaders gathered for a meeting with WHO’s local team of social anthropologists.

Imam El hadj Moussa Soumahoro wears a serious face. He has just ended a morning sermon that concluded with Ebola preventive messages and the importance of vaccination against the virus that recently re-emerged in Guinea for the first time since the 2014–2016 outbreak. Soumahoro has joined the fight against the disease.