Dozens feared exposed as Sierra Leone confirms new Ebola death

Samples taken from the body of a woman who died this week in Sierra Leone tested positive for Ebola, officials said Friday, the day after the Ebola epidemic was declared over.

The World Health Organization, which on Thursday declared an end to the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever, said the new case emerged during a 90-day period of heightened surveillance, and that Sierra Leone’s government acted rapidly. Authorities are initiating control measures to prevent further transmission, it said.

The infected 22-year-old woman came from the Northern Kambia District and went to the Northern Tonkolili District for medical care, Francis Langoba Kellie, spokesman for the Office of National Security, said on the radio.

Marie Jalloh, was taken ill near the Guinean border on Thursday last week and died on Tuesday, local health officials said as the WHO issued a statement from Geneva confirming she was killed by Ebola.

A total of 27 people have been placed in quarantine in a bid to prevent the spread of the disease, health ministry officials said. Augustine Junisa, the chief local medical officer, told reporters the student became ill while on holiday in the village of Bamoi Luma and was taken by relatives to hospital.

The official said the woman “died at home” but did not say why she had been released from the hospital in Magburaka, the capital of the northern Tonkolili district.

Sierra Leone’s northern border area, a maze of waterways, was one of the country’s last Ebola hot spots before it was declared Ebola-free on Nov. 7, and contact tracing was sometimes bedeviled by access problems.

By the time she travelled back to her parents’ home in Tonkolili district, east of the capital Freetown, using three different taxis, Jalloh had diarrhoea and was vomiting, the report said.

She sought treatment at the local Magburaka Government Hospital on Jan. 8 where a health worker, who did not wear protective clothing, took a blood sample. It was not immediately clear whether the sample was tested for Ebola.

She was treated as an outpatient and returned home, where she died on Jan. 12. Health workers took a swab test of Jalloh’s body following her death, which tested positive for Ebola.

“The sample was tested for the first time on Thursday morning – around the same time as the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak over”, said Tim Brooks of Public Health England, the British agency that tested the sample at its lab in Sierra Leone.

Dozens of young people gathered outside the hospital on Friday in a noisy demonstration, some holding placards accusing the health department of negligence.

“We are demonstrating because we want the authorities to explain to us why the woman was discharged and allowed to go home, where she died, and her corpse was given to her family to bury. We are now concerned that some family members may have been infected,” said local youth leader Mahmud Tarawally.

“It is really important that people don’t understand this 42-day announcement as the sign that we should all just pack up and go home,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Friday. “We should stay there and be ready to respond to these possible cases.”