Guinean who brought Ebola to Senegal recovers from virus

September 10, 2014 6:54 AM

DAKAR (Reuters) – The first case of the Ebola virus detected in Senegal, a 21-year-old student who arrived from neighbouring Guinea last month, has recovered from the deadly disease, a senior official said on Wednesday.

“We did a first blood test on Friday and a second 48 hours later and both of them came back negative,” Papa Amadou Diack, Senegal’s director of health, told Reuters. “This is very good news for the patient and for the country.”

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday there were two other suspected cases of Ebola in Senegal, but no other confirmed ones. The world’s worst ever outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 2,296 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Senegalese authorities have been monitoring 67 people who came into contact with the Guinean student and trying to trace his route on the more than 1,000-km land journey across the border from southwest Guinea.

Some 33 people have been placed under quarantine in the house in the teeming neighbourhood of Parcelles Assainies where he stayed with an uncle after arriving in Dakar in late August.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the epidemic is spreading exponentially in the worst affected country, Liberia, and it expects thousands of new cases there in the next three weeks.