Guinea News

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.

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.

Studies show that the Ebola virus can persist in bodily fluids – such as semen and breast milk – of survivors for months. The recent resurgence of Ebola in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been linked to bodily fluids of survivors.

A few days after he referred a patient from his clinic to the regional hospital, Emmanuel Goepogui, a private practitioner in N’Zerekore prefecture in south-eastern Guinea, received a visit by a community disease surveillance team. “They came to inform me that my patient had tested positive for Ebola and that I was a direct contact,” he says.

Ministers of Health from Guinea – which is combating a new Ebola outbreak – and neighbouring countries have agreed on a unified front to combat the virus that re-emerged about three weeks ago.

Ebola vaccination of people at high risk kicked off today in Guinea as the emergency response was escalated to counter the spread of the virus that re-emerged in the country a little more than a week ago for the first time since 2016.

With efforts gathering pace to promptly tackle the new Ebola outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the World Health Organization (WHO) is deploying teams of experts to support the national authorities ramp up the response and avert widespread infections.