he UN's health agency has declared Guinea's Ebola
outbreak over, two years after it emerged and pushed the West African
nation's worst-hit communities to the brink of collapse.
One of
the poorest nations in the world, the former French colony was the host
for "patient zero" — an infant who became the first victim — and health
authorities went on to record some 2,500 deaths.
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| Photo: Guinea was on the frontline for Ebola vaccine trials during the outbreak. (AFP: Cellou Binani) |
The fever spread
stealthily from December 2013, striking two neighbouring countries,
Sierra Leone and Liberia, with sporadic cases also in Mali, Nigeria and
Senegal.
Around 11,300 people died out of almost 29,000 recorded
cases, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) tally that many
experts believe greatly understates the real impact of the outbreak.
It was the deadliest epidemic of Ebola since the disease was first identified in 1976.
The last known case in Guinea was a three-month-old named Nubia, who
was born with the disease but whose recovery was confirmed on November
16.
That triggered the countdown to the announcement, as a period
of 42 days — twice the virus's maximum incubation period — is required
to declare a country free of transmission.
Guineans battling Ebola
have been faced with huge obstacles, not least the country's grinding
poverty and a crumbling medical infrastructure.
Frontline workers
have also had to combat the rumour mill, entrenched denial, fear of
Ebola stigma and resistance to confinement measures deemed authoritarian
or unreasonable.
They also had to persuade people to abandon
funeral traditions whereby mourners touch the body of their loved one — a
potent pathway to infection.
The epidemic devastated the
economies of the worst-hit countries, as crops rotted in the fields,
mines were abandoned and goods could not get to market.
Strong
recent growth has been curtailed in Guinea and while Liberia has resumed
growth, Sierra Leone is facing a severe recession, according to the
World Bank, which has mobilised $US1.62 billion ($2.23 billion) for
Ebola response and recovery efforts.
Mixed emotions in Guinea after years of devastation
People
in the capital, Conakry, greeted the declaration by authorities with
mixed emotions given the deaths and the damage the virus did to the
economy and the country's health and education sectors.
"It's the
best year-end present that God could give to Guinea, and the best news
that Guineans could hope for," Ebola survivor Alama Kambou Dore said.
"Several of my family are dead. This situation has
shown us how much we must fight for those who are survivors," said Fanta
Oulen Camara, who works for Doctors Without Borders.
"After I
got better, the hardest thing was to make people welcome me. Most people
that normally supported me abandoned me. Even the school where I was an
instructor dropped me. It was very hard," said Camara, 26, who fell ill
in March 2014.
Ebola has orphaned about 6,200 children in Guinea,
according to Rene Migliani, an official at the national coordination
centre for the fight against Ebola.
Almost all the cases and deaths were in Guinea and its neighbours Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Liberia
has lost more than 4,800 people to the haemorrhagic fever, but if all
goes well, the country will be declared virus-free in January.
It was declared Ebola free in May and September, but each time new cases emerged. Sierra Leone officially ended its epidemic in November.
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