In yet another blow for the doctors fighting the spread of this deadly disease, AP reports [2], Mali's health minister says the West African country has confirmed its first case of Ebola. Despite every effort to close borders, quarantine areas, and now send US troops (to do... well we are not sure really), Mali becomes the sixth West African country to report an Ebola case.
Mauvaise Nouvelle EBOLA:
Le Mali vient d'enregistrer son premier cas positif. Il s'agit d'une fillette de 2 ans( Ministère de la santé)
— dr. etienne fakaba (@etiooo) October 23, 2014 [3]
As AP reports, [2]
Mali's health minister says the West African country has confirmed its first case of Ebola.
The announcement made on Malian state television Thursday evening by Ousmane Kone said that the patient was a 2-year-old girl who had come from neighboring Guinea.
The child was brought to a hospital in the Malian town of Kayes on Wednesday, and her blood sample tested positive for the virus.
Mali becomes the sixth West African country to report an Ebola case — though nearly all the cases and deaths have occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Senegal and Nigeria had imported cases though both have now been declared Ebola-free.
The World Health Organization says the disease has killed at least 4,877 people and infected 9,936.
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[4]
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Sadly this comes just hours after WHO said the following:
The World Health Organization said on Thursday it was still trying to slow the rate of new infections but had "reasonable confidence" that the Ebola virus plaguing three West African ountries had not spread into neighbouring states.
Asked whether countries such as Guinea Bissau, Mali and Ivory Coast might have cases of the disease crossing their borders without knowing about or reporting them, WHO assistant director general Keiji Fukuda said he considered that unlikely.
"I think that there is reasonable confidence right now that we are not seeing widespread transmission of Ebola into the neighbouring countries," Fukuda told a news briefing in Geneva.
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Nailed it! [5]
