Ebola spreads to Sierra Leone; 5 reported dead

At least five people have died in Sierra Leone's first confirmed outbreak of the Ebola virus, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent, has killed more than 100 people in neighboring Guinea and Liberia since March, in the first deadly appearance of the disease in West Africa.

In a statement posted on its website, the WHO said the outbreak in Sierra Leone was in an area along the country's border with Guinea's Guéckédou prefecture, where some of the earliest cases of the disease were recorded.

"Preliminary information received from the field indicates that one laboratory-confirmed case and five community deaths have been reported from Koindu chiefdom," it said. The WHO said it was immediately deploying six experts to the area along with essential supplies.

Several suspected cases of Ebola had been reported in Sierra Leone earlier in the West African outbreak, but those patients later tested negative for the disease.

Ebola has been more commonly found in Central Africa — including the Democratic Republic of Congo and Gabon — and in Uganda and South Sudan.

There is no vaccine and no known cure for Ebola, which initially induces fever, headaches, muscle pain and weakness. In its more acute phase, Ebola causes vomiting, diarrhea and external bleeding, symptoms that facilitate the rapid spread of the virus. Human-to-human contact, directly or via exposure to such secretions, are most often behind the transmission of the virus.

Al Jazeera and Reuters