A novelty in more than 25 years. A case of Ebola virus contamination was detected in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), we found out this Saturday, August 14.
It was the Minister of Health, Pierre Demba, who revealed it during an intervention on national television RTI. The person affected is an “18-year-old girl of Guinean nationality”. She had just arrived in the country on August 11, when Guinea had officially conquered the disease two months earlier.
A situation that led to the communication of the World Health Organization, since it considered that the case was “extremely worrying”. The Minister of Health for his part called for calm, believing that it was an “isolated and imported case”, while specifying that the patient was “currently in isolation and treated at the treatment center. Highly epidemic diseases at the University Hospital of Treichville ”.
The WHO explained that 5,000 doses of the Ebola vaccine must be delivered to the country from Guinea. Pierre Demba promised that “target groups, front-line health personnel, immediate contacts with patients, security forces at our borders” will receive a dose.
At present, the government, which organized an inter-ministerial meeting, is not panicking. “All arrangements are being made to deal with this situation. The health system to control the disease exists and has been successfully tested in the past, ”said Pierre Demba. The country had not registered any Ebola cases since 1994, while Liberia and Guinea, two bordering countries, have been severely affected in recent years.
Therefore, the WHO must monitor the evolution of the situation, especially since the case occurred in Abidjan, the capital of the country with more than 4 million inhabitants. If the disease is fatal and has a high fatality rate, the specialized agency assures that “now there is an effective treatment, and if patients are treated at an early stage of the disease, with parallel supportive care, their chances of survival they improve considerably ”.