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A TOP GUINEA health official said today that the country has plunged into an Ebola “epidemic situation” with seven cases confirmed in the West African nation, including three deaths.
“Very early this morning, the Conakry laboratory confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus,” Sakoba Keita said after an emergency meeting in the capital.
Health Minister Remy Lamah had earlier spoken of four deaths. It was not immediately clear why the new toll was lower.
The cases marked the first known resurgence of Ebola in West Africa since a 2013-2016 epidemic that began in Guinea and killed more than 11,300 people across the region.
The virus was first identified in 1976 in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
A World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Conakry said the agency would send help quickly.
Keita, head of the National Agency for Health Security, said one person had died in late January in Gouecke, southeastern Guinea, near the Liberian border.
The victim was buried on 1 February “and some people who took part in this funeral began to have symptoms of diarrhoea, vomiting, bleeding and fever a few days later,” he said.
Samples tested by a laboratory set up by the European Union in Gueckedou, located in the same region, revealed the presence of the Ebola virus in some of them on Friday, said Keita.
He added that with a total of seven cases and three deaths, Guinea was now in an “Ebola epidemic situation.”
WHO representative Alfred George Ki-Zerbo told a press briefing: “We are going to rapidly deploy crucial assets to help Guinea, which already has considerable experience” treating the disease.
“The arsenal is stronger now and we will take advantage of that to contain this situation as fast as possible.
“The WHO is on full alert and is in contact with the manufacturer (of a vaccine) to ensure the necessary doses are made available as quickly as possible to help fight back,” he added.
The WHO has eyed each new Ebola outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the most recent one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as an international health emergency.
In Guinea’s neighbour Liberia, President George Weah put the country’s health authorities on heightened alert.
Weah “has mandated the Liberian health authorities and related stakeholders in the sector to heighten the country’s surveillance and preventative activities,” his office said in a statement.
No cases of Ebola had been detected in Liberia so far however, it added.
“The president’s instruction is intended to ensure Liberia acts proactively to avoid any epidemic situation, the kind Liberia witnessed in 2014.”
Weah also told health authorities “to immediately engage communities in towns and villages bordering Guinea and increase anti-Ebola measures,” the statement said.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has faced several outbreak of the illness, with the WHO on Thursday confirming a resurgence three months after authorities declared the end of the country’s latest outbreak.
The country had declared the six-month epidemic over in November. It was the country’s eleventh Ebola outbreak, claiming 55 lives out of 130 cases.
The widespread use of vaccinations, which were administered to more than 40,000 people, helped curb the disease there, however.
The 2013-2016 outbreak sped up the development of a vaccine against Ebola, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.
I mean yeah the lad probably shouldnt have flown close enough to steal a chip but also Russia is quite a good deal closer to the Baltic than the USA. So close in fact that they have a seaport and a major city on it, while the USA is several thousand miles away. USAF hardly taking recon pics of fish.
@stephen: They’re doing lots of training with their NATO allies.
Maybe he was just trying to tell the yank he’d taken a wrong turn…’our submarine base is over that direction’…only sayin!
Given the content of this article any chance The Journal could also report of the NATO jet that buzzed the Russian Defence Ministers plane earlier today ?
Right up beside it and they would have known very well it was a Russian government jet.
Whatever you can say about the posturing both do with military planes involved but to send a fighter jet up to a unarmed Russian government plane seems to be delivering a slightly sinister and not so subtle message.
Did Goose get a polaroid picture of the Russian pilot?
War games
I think the the story needs to add more weight to the fact a US spy plane was operating a few minutes flying time from Russian airspace.
@Aidan O’Donovan: Russian military planes are frequently intercepted off the coast of Alaska, USA
@Diaspora’d: all about the lens your using. Alaska is off the Coast of Russia! The Baltic ain’t near any part of the US, they’re all at this all the time. No biggie
@Diaspora’d: lol Russia is only a couple of miles from Alaska
But was he inverted?
Putin and the Russians have more restraint than any other nation on earth. If the tables were reversed, WWIII would already be on…….
@Patrick Kavanagh: agreed, the US nearly brought the world to nuclear apocalypse in 1960 because the russians moved missiles to cuba, a stone from the yanks. And now nato which is basically the us are building bases and pointing missiles towards russia & they want us to believe the russians are the threat
@Frank McGonigal: ..and the US president responsible was feted and fawned over just a year later when he visited Ireland in 1963.
What was the Russian pilot doing so far from home?
@George Vladisavljevic: Probably out of Kaliningrad.
This headline is a quote from a US military spokesman. I guess it must be true then!!
At the speed they would be traveling at and with only 5′ of clearance between both aircraft all it would have taken to bring both planes down would have a a gust of wind at the wrong time, turbulence or the slightest error of movement by either pilot.
I believe it’s standard practice for all planes to use a transponder, a device that alerts other planes in the vicinity of their presence when they may not be able to see them. It’s worth remembering that no pilot wants to have another plane, commercial or military, accidently fly into them. Russian planes routinely turn their transponders off making them a risk for all air traffic.
@Rusty Balls: yet you likely believe the US spying reconnaissance plane had its on while in Russias back yard!
@Rusty Balls: at the speed they fly at transponders aren’t going to be much use even if they were on.
u wouldnt have seen US spy planes within a 1000 miles of russia 30 years ago. bloody cheek of the yanks in this case
@gregory: Their training with their NATO allies. You know, the countries that broke from the Soviet Union and have no wish to return. Why are these countries so determined to ally themselves with ‘the west’ and not Russia?
@Honeybadger197:
David Hasselhoff
@Thinck: Keep that to yourself though. Say nuthin’…
https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/873260044317593600
Heres a few photos.
@Honeybadger197: A lot more than 5′ between those planes.
@Mick Jordan: Certainly is. Nice photos though. Serious selection of bombers.
@Honeybadger197: thats not it. Different plane different day.
@TeaRex: You’re 100% correct. Apologies.
@Honeybadger197: still great photos though
@Honeybadger197: Great pics. I liked the joke by USDoD in the comments as well.
@Honeybadger197: no need for apologies! They are great photos though!!
I dont see the report mentioning where exactly it happened, other than international airspace. Was it just outside Russian airspace, in which case it was the American pilot was flying too close to a Russian plane.
The Russian pilot should have gone to Specsavers…..
What’s the issue here? If Russian spy planes were flying so close to American air space you can bet your ass they would scramble fights to intercept them.
Pot, kettle, black.
@David Ronan: Its the distance they came to that the US are giving out about. It was simply a stupid thing to do. Both planes could have been brought down by the smallest error or nature.
@Mick Jordan: were the Americans stupid for shooting the Syrian plane out of the sky in Syria this week?
@Cal Mooney: Not if they were defending members of their Special Forces from attack by the Syrian Air Force.
@Cal Mooney: No they were absolutely correct.
@Cal Mooney: you’re wasting your time here Cal….America=great lads altogether, Russia=terrible lads altogether. Sure it even said it on the news. The boys know their stuff.
@Mick Jordan: They never claimed they were protecting members of their special forces but do you think it’s legally OK for a country to shoot down a plane inside that jets own sovereign territory when the aggressor has no legitimate or legal right to be there at the moment?
A nation that is not legally merited to be inside another country has no legitimate claim to use the reasoning of ‘self defence’ at all anyways. Coming legally speaking, not opinionated points of view.
@Andy Brown: sadly different rules and standards are applied to here when asserting who’s right or wrong as usual. West = good, East = bad. Asides from operating illegally without invitation by the Syrian gov., the US has for 5 years now been training, arming and supporting the ‘rebels’ fighting against the Syrian army while ensuring they’re well supplies and enforcing embargoes on Syrian forces restocking supplies. In that time ISIS got to run amuck as the army where kept busy battling western backed foreign invaders under a long changing array of names. The Syrians still and understandable see all forces as illegal and legitimate targets as any country would. The US and our media have been busy ensuring we don’t make the above association and accept US are solely there to fight IS.
Pretty s**t spy plane.
The usual shit from the war mongers . Why can’t they stay at home and kill their own .
American shit.
@Brendan Keegan: Nice abusive comment there, did you ever wonder why these former Soviet Eastern Bloc countries rush to join NATO ? Russia is there nearest neighbor yet they can’t wait to join NATO
Keeping up foreign relations. Yes, I know the finger Goose.
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