The Mali government has confirmed the first case of Ebola in the country.<\/p>\n
It said a two-year-old girl had tested positive for the haemorrhagic virus. She recently returned from the neighbouring Guinea.<\/p>\n
More than 4,800 people have died of Ebola – mainly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone – since March.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, an international team of scientists has been set up to determine the effectiveness of using the blood of Ebola survivors as a treatment.<\/p>\n
It is hoped the antibodies used by the immune system to fight Ebola can be transferred from a survivor to a patient. The study will start in Guinea.
\nPorous borders<\/p>\n
Speaking on state television on Thursday, Malian Health Minister Ousmane Kone said the infected girl was being treated in the western town of Kayes.<\/p>\n
She was brought to a local hospital on Wednesday and her blood sample was Ebola-positive, Mr Kone said.<\/p>\n
The child and those who have come into contact with her have been put in quarantine.<\/p>\n
The girl’s mother died in Guinea a few weeks ago and the child was then brought by relatives to Mali, Reuters news agency quotes a health ministry official as saying.<\/p>\n
Mali is now the sixth West African country to be affected by the latest Ebola outbreak – however Senegal and Nigeria have since been declared virus-free by the WHO.<\/p>\n
With porous borders, countries neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are on high alert for possible imported cases of the virus, says BBC regional correspondent Anne Soy.<\/p>\n
Separately, the World Health Organization (WHO) has already identified at least two experimental vaccines which it believes could be promising.<\/p>\n
At a meeting in Geneva, the UN health body said it wanted tests of the vaccines to be completed by the end of December.<\/p>\n
The WHO says 443 health workers have contracted Ebola, of whom 244 have died.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Credit: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Mali government has confirmed the first case of Ebola in the country. It said a two-year-old girl had tested positive for the haemorrhagic virus. She recently returned from the neighbouring Guinea. More than 4,800 people have died of Ebola – mainly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone – since March. Meanwhile, an international team […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":50496,"comment_status":"open","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-59058","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\/59058","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=59058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}