First case of Ebola confirmed in Mali: Health Ministry

Bamako: Mali’s health ministry has said the country had its first confirmed case of Ebola after a two-year-old girl who had recently been in Guinea tested positive for the virus.

Health ministry spokesman Markatche Daou said that she had travelled to neighbouring Guinea with her grandmother and that the authorities were aware of her itinerary.

The ministry said the girl had visited Kissidougou, a town in the southern part of Guinea where the Ebola outbreak was first identified in December 2013.

According to World Health Organization figures 10,000 people have been infected and almost 4,900 have died of the disease in west Africa.

Mali’s health ministry said all necessary steps had been taken to avoid the spread of Ebola, and called on residents to remain calm.

However it warned against all unnecessary travel to affected areas and urged hygiene and safety measures to be respected.

In April there were some suspected Ebola cases in Mali, but these proved to be false alarms.

In August Senegal also registered a confirmed Ebola case, imported from Guinea. That case did not spread and last week Senegal was declared Ebola-free. International alarm has been stoked by cases beyond Africa.

Spain has seen one non-fatal infection, a nurse who caught Ebola from a patient she cared for — a missionary who died of the disease after returning from Liberia.

In United States, two nurses fell ill after caring for a Liberian man who died from the disease on October 8, the first Ebola case to be diagnosed on US soil.

So far, though clinical trials are underway, no vaccine has been produced for the disease which is transmitted through bodily fluids, leaving health workers especially at risk.