Guinea has been declared Ebola free by the UN’s World Health Organization.
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Despite Tuesday’s milestone, people in the capital, Conakry, greeted the declaration with mixed emotions, given the deaths and the damage the virus did to the economy and the country’s health and education sectors.
AP noted that Guinea was the last to struggle to stamp out the deadly disease, until Liberia saw a new case in November.
“The coming months will be absolutely critical”.
That triggered the countdown to the announcement, as a period of 42 days – twice the virus’s maximum incubation period – is required to declare a country free of transmission.
The pronouncement marks a key victory in the fight against the deadly infectious disease, but public health experts say it’s too soon to let our guard down.
World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim issued a statement congratulating the government and people of Guinea on reaching the milestone.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Guinea Ebola free on Tuesday, thereby ending two-year long plague in West Africa.
The West African country is where Ebola emerged two years ago, later spreading to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone. “They were more likely to die if infected”, stressed UNICEF Guinea Representative Mohamed Ag Ayoya. Another Ebola survivor and health worker told the BBC, “We have to be very careful, because even if open transmission has been stopped, the disease has not been totally defeated”.
Sierra Leone officially ended its epidemic in November.
In March, a reinforcement team from MSF with viral haemorrhagic fever specialists arrived in Gueckedou and started an exploratory intervention, supporting the health ministry in collecting samples for analysis and setting up the first Ebola management centre (EMC) in the country. In Guinea, vaccinations for children under one year dropped 30 per cent, all hospitalizations fell 54 per cent and assisted deliveries by a trained practitioner dropped 11 per cent between January and August 2014, according to the Government.
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Grinding poverty and a crumbling medical infrastructure are only the first items on the list.
