{"id":43118,"date":"2014-08-30T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-08-30T06:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=43118"},"modified":"2014-08-29T19:30:34","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T19:30:34","slug":"ebola-outbreak-senegal-confirms-first-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=43118","title":{"rendered":"Ebola outbreak: Senegal confirms first case"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senegal’s health minister has confirmed a first case of Ebola, making it the fifth West African country to be affected by the outbreak.<\/p>\n

Awa Marie Coll Seck told reporters on Friday that a young man from Guinea had travelled to Senegal despite having been infected with the virus.<\/p>\n

The man was immediately placed in quarantine, she added.<\/p>\n

The current outbreak, which began in Guinea, has killed more than 1,500 people across the region.<\/p>\n

At least 3,000 people have been infected with the virus. The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned it could get much worse and infect more than 20,000 people.<\/p>\n

Guinea riot<\/p>\n

Senegal had previously closed its border with Guinea in an attempt to halt the spread of Ebola, but the frontier is porous.<\/p>\n

\"AThe affected countries have been running public information campaigns to warn about Ebola<\/div>\n

It had also banned flights and ships from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – the three worst-hit countries.<\/p>\n

The Guinean student sought treatment at a hospital in Senegal’s capital Dakar on Tuesday, but did not tell staff he had had contact with Ebola patients in his own country.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Guinean health services reported “the disappearance of a person infected with Ebola who reportedly travelled to Senegal,” according to Senegal’s health minister.<\/p>\n

She said the missing person was quickly identified as the Guinean student and he was immediately quarantined.<\/p>\n

Senegal, a major transit hub for aid agencies, has a large Guinean population.<\/p>\n

In Guinea, a 24-hour curfew has been imposed in the second city, Nzerekore, because of a riot after the main market was sprayed with disinfectant in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n

\"HealthTreatment centres in the affected West African states are already said to be operating at full capacity<\/div>\n

The exact cause of the riot is not clear – some people reportedly feared the spray would spread Ebola, while other chanted: “Ebola is a lie”. Police responded by firing tear gas.<\/p>\n

The city is the capital of the Forest Region, where the Ebola epidemic has its epicentre – near the town of Gueckedou.<\/p>\n

However the BBC’s Alhassan Sillah in Guinea says the town has miraculously remained free of Ebola so far.<\/p>\n

There have been relatively few cases in Guinea recently, with far higher infection rates in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and six deaths in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

\"Map\"<\/div>\n

On Thursday, the WHO unveiled a plan aimed at stopping transmission of the virus in the next six to nine months.<\/p>\n

Among its recommendations, it said countries affected should conduct exit screening to prevent the disease from spreading to a further 10 countries.<\/p>\n

The plan calls for $489m (\u00a3295m) to be spent over the next nine months and requires 750 international workers and 12,000 national workers across West Africa.<\/p>\n

\"line\"<\/div>\n

Ebola Virus Disease (EVD)<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Symptoms include high fever, bleeding and central nervous system damage<\/li>\n
  • Spread by body fluids, such as blood and saliva<\/li>\n
  • Fatality rate can reach 90% – but current outbreak has mortality rate of about 55%<\/li>\n
  • Incubation period is two to 21 days<\/li>\n
  • There is no vaccine or cure<\/li>\n
  • Supportive care such as rehydrating patients who have diarrhoea and vomiting can help recovery<\/li>\n
  • Fruit bats, a delicacy\u00a0for some West Africans, are considered to be virus’s natural host<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Senegal’s health minister has confirmed a first case of Ebola, making it the fifth West African country to be affected by the outbreak. Awa Marie Coll Seck told reporters on Friday that a young man from Guinea had travelled to Senegal despite having been infected with the virus. The man was immediately placed in quarantine, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":43127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-43118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}