New Sierra Leone Ebola Case is Responding Well to the Treatment

There has been a second new case of Ebola in Sierra Leone since west Africa celebrated the apparent end of the deadly epidemic last week. However, the good news is that the 38-year-old patient is responding well to treatment, reported an official. "The patient is responding well to treatment in a Freetown clinic. Authorities had yet to determine the origin of the new outbreak," said Dr. Foday Dafai, a ministry of health disease control official.

Dr. Dafai further added, "The latest sufferer, who had been Jalloh's 'primary caregiver', was in quarantine in the northern city of Magburaka when she tested positive and was transferred to the capital."

After visiting the woman, Dr. Dafai indicated that 121 contacts have been identified to have been exposed to the index case and 47 of them have been classified as high risk contacts and so were under observation.

Given the potential for further infection he added, "It is therefore very important that we quickly locate and isolate anyone who may have had contact with the latest sufferer."

Dr. Dafai also said that a vaccination program for known contacts and overseen by chief medical officer Brima Kargbo was progressing satisfactorily, but urged anybody who may have been exposed to the virus to come forward. He said, "At the moment, we still don't know the source of infection in the first index case involving Marie Jalloh."

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said that 150 of Jalloh's contacts had been identified, of which 42 are high risk.

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Local people expressed concern over the potential further spread of a tropical virus which is at its most infectious as people are dying or in the bodies of those who have died from a virus which emerged in 2013 in southern Guinea.

Source-AFP