• An Ebola outbreak which started in southeast Guinea in February, infecting 16 people and killing 12, has been declared over, the health ministry and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. 

• Guinea’s latest outbreak was declared on February 14 after three cases were detected in Gouecke, a rural community in the southern N’zerekore prefecture. 

• WHO helped ship around 24,000 Ebola vaccine doses and supported the vaccination of nearly 11,000 people at high risk, including over 2,800 frontline workers. 

• The latest outbreak was the first to emerge in Guinea since a deadly outbreak from 2014 to 2016 killed more than 11,300 people in West Africa.

• That originated in the same region before spreading to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Ebola virus disease

• Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans and other primates.

• The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals (such as fruit bats, porcupines and non-human primates) and then spreads in the human population through direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials contaminated with these fluids.

• The average EVD case fatality rate is around 50 per cent. Case fatality rates have varied from 25 per cent to 90 per cent in past outbreaks.

• EVD first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks, one in what is now Nzara, South Sudan, and the other in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name.

• The 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa was the largest Ebola outbreak since the virus was first discovered in 1976.

• Community engagement is key to successfully controlling outbreaks.

• There is as yet no proven treatment available for EVD. Supportive care — rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids — and treatment of specific symptoms improves survival. However, a range of potential treatments including blood products, immune therapies and drug therapies are currently being evaluated.

• Vaccines to protect against Ebola have been developed and were used to help control the spread of Ebola outbreaks in Guinea and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

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