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Guinea govt says two people have died from Ebola

Two people from the same family have died from Ebola in Guinea, the government said Thursday, as the WHO declared a flare-up of the virus in neighbouring Sierra Leone over. The cases are the first in Guinea since the country was declared Ebola free at the end of last year, and the UN health agency warned that a recurrence of the tropical disease — which has claimed 11,300 lives since December 2013 — remained a possibility. WHO declared that flare-up officially over on Thursday after no new cases were seen for 42 days — the length of two Ebola incubation cycles.

Sierra Leone: Officials confirm new Ebola death

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Health officials in Sierra Leone on Sunday confirmed an Ebola death less than a week after the country’s last known patient was discharged from a hospital.

Liberia removes Ebola crematorium as outbreak is contained

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — Marking the progress in controlling its Ebola outbreak, the Liberian government dismantled a crematorium and removed drums containing the ashes of more than 3,000 Ebola victims cremated during the height of the epidemic, whose last patient was discharged last week.

Fears over abandoned Ebola orphans allayed: UNICEF

Almost every child who has lost parents to Ebola is being cared for in their community, UNICEF said on Friday — allaying fears that thousands would be shunned by relatives and neighbours. “Since overcoming their initial fears and misconceptions about Ebola, families have been showing incredible support, providing care and protection for children whose parents have died,” UNICEF regional director Manuel Fontaine said in a statement. UNICEF said the outlook was particularly good in Guinea, where all 773 children who lost both parents had been placed with their extended families. The outbreak has claimed almost 9,000 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, leaving a similar number of children with just a single parent and some 3,600 orphaned.

Free from Ebola, survivors complain of new syndrome

By Emma Farge and James Harding Giahyue DAKAR/MONROVIA (Reuters) – Romeo Doe, a 29-year-old tailor who survived Ebola in Liberia, is struggling to cope with the impact of a disease that killed seven members of his family and now threatens his livelihood. There are a growing number of survivors of the disease in the region, between 5,000 and 10,000 according to the United Nations, and some complain of side effects months after their recovery – a condition some doctors are calling “post-Ebola Syndrome” (PES). About 60 percent of Ebola patients have died in the current outbreak, typically from shock or organ failure. Margaret Nanyonga, a doctor who treated Ebola patients in the town of Kenema in Sierra Leone, said she had seen survivors go blind.

Ebola response in rural Sierra Leone not yet rapid enough

By Emma Farge KOIDU, Sierra Leone (Reuters) – The rapid response team has arrived and the chaos is easing, but medics in a remote Sierra Leonean district are struggling to control a local Ebola outbreak when it's too late to nip it in the bud. A deployment of medical workers and equipment to Kono District has been the fastest so far in Sierra Leone, a country with nearly half the total Ebola cases,- under a strategy of tackling epidemic hotspots before they get too big. …

American nurse exposed to Ebola released from hospital

(Reuters) – An American nurse who was exposed to Ebola while volunteering in Sierra Leone was released from the National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center in Maryland on Friday without showing signs of the disease, NIH said. “The patient has shown no clinical or laboratory evidence of Ebola infection and will complete 21 days of monitoring at a private residence in Virginia under the direction of the Virginia Department of Health,” NIH said in a statement. …