WHO sends specialists to Guinea, warns of Ebola flare-up

The World Health Organization (WHO) dispatched a team of specialists to the southern prefecture of Nzerekore in Guinea after two new cases of Ebola were detected and confirmed in a rural village, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here Friday.

"Response teams will work to investigate the origin of the new infections and to identify, isolate and monitor all contacts of the new cases and those who died," Dujarric said at a daily news briefing.

"The new infections in Guinea were confirmed the same day that WHO declared the end of the latest Ebola flare-up in neighboring Sierra Leone," he said.

The UN health agency stressed that "recurrences of the disease should be anticipated and that the three Ebola-impacted countries must maintain strong capacity to prevent, detect and respond to disease outbreaks," he said.

Four people in southern Guinea were tested on Thursday and two of them were found to have Ebola. They were all from the same village where three people from the same family have died in recent weeks from diarrhea and vomiting.

Guinea had been nearing the end of a 90-day period of heightened surveillance when the fresh cases were reported -- the West African country's first known re-emergence of Ebola after the outbreak was officially declared over there at the end of December 2015.

More than 28,500 people have been infected and 11,300 have died since the world's worst recorded Ebola epidemic began in December 2013, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Enditem