Guinea announced the closure of its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia on Saturday in a bid to halt the spread of Ebola, a virus that has killed nearly 1,000 people in the three African countries this year.
At least 367 people have died in Guinea of Ebola since March and 18 others are being treated in the country in isolation, but the decision was taken primarily to avoid infected people crossing into the West African state, authorities said.
"We have provisionally closed the frontier between Guinea and Sierra Leone because of all the news that we have received from there recently," Health Minister Rémy Lamah told a news conference, noting that Guinea had also closed its border with Liberia.
The measures had been taken in consultation with the two neighbours, Guinea's minister for international cooperation, Moustapha Koutoub Sano, told the news conference.
The UN World Health Organization said on Friday that Ebola represents an international health emergency and could continue spreading for months.
The outbreak has killed at least 961 people as of Aug. 6 and "is moving faster than we can control it," WHO's director general Margaret Chan told reporters from Geneva on Friday.
Ebola has a death rate of about 50 per cent and has so far killed at least 932 people. (Tarik Jasarevic/WHO/Reuters)
Nigeria became the third African nation, after Sierra Leone and Liberia, to declare a national emergency on Friday as the region's health-care systems struggle to cope with the advance of one of the deadliest diseases known to man.
About 40 per cent of the victims are children, said Robert MacGillivray, regional humanitarian director with Save the Children in Freetown, Sierre Leone.
"We have examples of unaccompanied children and these are children whose parents have succumbed to Ebola," he told CBC News on Saturday. "We now have children who are basically the caregivers of their siblings."
"In general terms, we have a fairly tense and scared population here in Sierre Leone," he said.
MacGillivray said some people in Sierre Leone don't trust the primary health-care centres and so they're staying home to treat symptoms of malaria, which are similar to those of the early onset of Ebola.
Malaria is a disease commonly linked to travelling to parts of Africa.
Ontario's minister of health, in a statement issued Friday night, also said that initial signs and symptoms of Ebola are similar to many more common diseases, such as malaria. Eric Hoskins was responding to news that a patient with flu-like symptoms has been isolated at a Brampton, Ont., hospital after recently visiting Nigeria.
Person who visited Nigeria now in isolation at Brampton hospital with flu-like symptoms
Dr. Eileen de Villa with Peel Public Health said the patient at Brampton Civic Hospital is showing a fever and other flu-like symptoms but cautioned there has been no diagnosis yet.
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Ebola outbreak: Guinea closes borders with West Africa countries
Dengan url
http://topstorinfo.blogspot.com/2014/08/ebola-outbreak-guinea-closes-borders.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Ebola outbreak: Guinea closes borders with West Africa countries
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Ebola outbreak: Guinea closes borders with West Africa countries
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar