By Enyichukwu Enemanna
At least eight persons have been confirmed dead from an unknown sickness causing hemorrhagic fever while 200 have been put in isolation facilities in Equatorial Guinea, Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba said on Friday.
He also said restriction of movement has been implemented in affected areas while testing of samples has commenced.
Preliminary investigations indicate that the deaths were linked to people who all took part in a funeral ceremony, Ayekaba said, adding the government had sent samples to neighbouring Gabon and will send others to Dakar in Senegal for further testing from the outbreak reported on Feb. 7.
Movement has been restricted in the two villages that are directly linked, he said, and contact tracing was ongoing. Over 200 people, who are showing no symptoms so far, are quarantined.
“We are trying to quickly as possible rule out the known hemorrhagic fevers we know in the region such as Lassa or Ebola,” Ayekaba told Reuters by telephone.
Equatorial Guinea’s neighbour Cameroon on Friday restricted movement along its border after the “unexplained deaths”, its Health Minister Malachie Manaouda said in a statement.
Cameroon imposed restrictions because of “the high risk of importation of this disease and in order to detect and respond to any cases at an early stage”, Manaouda said in a statement.
Investigations are underway and epidemiological surveillance has been strengthened with the support of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Atlanta Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Manaouda added.
The symptoms of the “non-identified illness” were nose bleeds, fever, joint pain and other ailments that caused death within a few hours, the head of health for the district, Ngu Fankam Roland, said in a statement.
Equatorial Guinea said on Wednesday that it had registered the “unusual epidemiological situation” over the past weeks in Kie-Ntem province’s Nsok Nsomo district that caused nine deaths in two adjacent communities over a short period.
Ayekaba said the toll was revised to eight after it was confirmed that one of deaths was not related to the outbreak.
