WHO declares end to second Ebola

outbreak in Guinea
The second outbreak, which was announced in February, killed at least 12 people.

In February, Guinea launched a vaccination drive to halt the spread of the disease [Carl De
Souza/AFP]
19 Jun 2021

An Ebola outbreak which started in Guinea in February, infecting 16 people and killing 12,
has been declared over, the West African country’s health ministry and the World Health
Organization said.

“I have the honour of declaring the end of Ebola” in Guinea, WHO official Alfred Ki-Zerbo
said on Saturday at a ceremony in the southeastern Nzerekore region where the disease
surfaced earlier this year.

KEEP READING
Will Africa’s healthcare systems cope with Ebola on top of COVID? Guineans
sceptical as gov’t steps up fight against EbolaDR Congo declares end of Ebola
outbreak

Health Minister Remy Lamah added: “In the name of the head of state (President Alpha
Conde) I wish to declare the end of resurgence of Ebola in Guinea.”

Health authorities were able to move swiftly to tackle the resurgence of the virus after
lessons learned from previous outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the
Congo.

“Based on the lessons learned from the 2014–16 outbreak and through rapid, coordinated
response efforts … Guinea managed to control the outbreak and prevent its spread beyond
its borders,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

In February, Guinea launched a vaccination drive to halt the spread of the disease.

“We managed very quickly to bring to fruition efforts around vaccination for Ebola and
contain transmissions using really effective diagnostic approaches,” Sterghios Moschos,
biomedical scientist and expert on viral diseases, told Al Jazeera.

Among these approaches, Moschos explained, was the implementation of ring vaccination
schemes that allowed people, who were around individuals infected with Ebola, to be
vaccinated very quickly and protected with 100 percent efficacy.
Funds provided by the international community in response to the previous outbreak also
played a key role in tackling this year’s Ebola crisis, Moschos explained.

“The international response that was put together to try and turn around the tide brought a
lot of money to the local community which reinvigorated the health care professional
training, but also brought in the local community an understanding of the disease,”
Moschos said.

“Because culturally people didn’t have the experience of Ebola when the disease came
across, they didn’t know how to respond to it,” he added.