A World Health Organization (WHO) official on Friday warned the risk of an Ebola outbreak spreading to Guinea’s neighbors is very high and that some of those countries are not well prepared for vaccination campaigns, reported UN News.
During a virtual briefing, Georges Alfred Ki-Zerbo, the WHO’s Guinea Representative, said 18 Ebola cases had been identified so far, and four of those infected had died. He added that until now 1,604 people have been vaccinated against Ebola in Guinea. It is the first resurgence of the virus in the country since the 2013-2016 outbreak which spread to several other West African countries and killed thousands of people.
The WHO Officials said Guinea’s neighboring countries including Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are not prepared for Ebola cases.
Abdou Slaam Gueye, the WHO’s Regional Emergency Director said the global health body did an assessment of the readiness of Guinea’s neighboring countries against the Ebola outbreak and found that none of the countries was completely ready.
“There are six neighboring countries to Guinea and we conducted an assessment of readiness,” Gueye said by videoconference from Guinea. “Two of the countries are not ready and one is borderline and there are three countries more or less ready.”
The WHO official said that none of the neighboring countries have enough vaccines to prevent their people from getting infected with this virus. However, he added that the countries have willingly agreed on cross-border cooperation to control the virus outbreak.
Notably, Ebola vaccines require ultra-cold chain storage, which presents logistical challenges. Guinea received COVID-19 vaccine doses donated from China earlier this week.
“We are dealing with quite fragile health systems including (lack of) capacity to address many public health challenges so dealing with both COVID and Ebola remains a challenge,” said the WHO’s Michel Yao, director of strategic health operations.
