Senegal Puts 20 People on Watch for Ebola After First Case
By Olivier Monnier
Bloomberg.com
Aug 31, 2014
Senegal placed 20 people who were exposed to the nation’s first Ebola case under surveillance, including the patient’s family and medical workers, Minister of Health Awa Marie Coll Seck said.
The 21-year-old college student from Guinea came in a six-passenger vehicle across a land border about three weeks ago, Seck said by phone from Dakar, Senegal’s capital, yesterday. The man no longer has a fever and is expected to recover after being treated with antibiotics and hydration solutions, she said. He got sick after the funeral of a relative who died of the disease.
“Our biggest problem is to manage to track down all the persons he has been in touch with since the signs have appeared,” said Seck, a former director of the United Nations program on HIV and AIDS. “We don’t want to miss anyone. The most important moment is now.”
Senegal moved quickly to identify the patient’s contacts and limit the impact after the worst-ever outbreak of the viral disease spread to a fifth country. The World Health Organization said this week that $490 million will be needed to contain the epidemic, which has killed almost as many people as all previous outbreaks combined. Food shortages and closed borders are complicating the World Food Programme’s efforts to feed 1.3 million in the region.
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