Equatorial Guinea announced on Wednesday March 30 two additional deaths from the Marburg virus, bringing the number of deaths officially attributed to the disease to nine.
Given the distance between the different confirmed cases, namely more than a hundred kilometers, the Director General of the World Health Organization, the Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed this week his concern about a wider transmission of the virus in Equatorial Guinea.
« WHO is aware of additional cases and we have asked the government to officially report these cases to the organization “, he said.
Yesterday, the Equatoguinean Ministry of Health announced thirteen confirmed cases including nine deaths and more than 800 contacts followed.
An emergency operation center is activated in Ebebiyin in the south of the country and in Bata, the economic capital, on the Atlantic coast.
WHO has deployed support experts. And says it is ready as soon as possible to test experimental vaccines for people at risk around the sick. Experimental vaccines for which a health safety protocol has been developed.
In northern Equatorial Guinea, in neighboring southern Cameroon, Jolinon Daniel Ebozo’o runs a community radio station in Olamze. It relays prevention messages because the border is very close: “ There are even places, if you are not told that you are in Guinea, you do not know. Sometimes the border is just a speed bump, a tree or a stream. So if you go into the bush and you find a dead animal, don’t say, it’s God who helped you, and gave you food that day, run away from that animal… It’s this kind of messages that we took over, we hammered, hygiene in fact… »
No case of contamination with the Marburg virus has been confirmed to date in Cameroon or Gabon.
In Tanzania too, the WHO says it is ready to work with the government to test experimental vaccines. Tanzania where, according to the WHO, eight cases of patients infected with the Marburg virus have been confirmed, including five deaths, all in the same region.