New Ebola case in Sierra Leone sets back efforts to beat epidemic

Health experts in Sierra Leone's northwestern Kambia district are investigating after a woman who died there last week tested positive for the Ebola. The development comes less than a week after the country's last known Ebola patient was discharged from a hospital, a World Health Organization spokeswoman said Monday.

"It's a step back and a disappointment, but it wasn't a surprise as it's near the border with Guinea," where cases remain, said WHO spokeswoman Dr. Margaret Harris, adding that further transmission can be stopped.

Once the source of transmission is found and contacts are traced, a vaccination trial will also begin in the northern Sierra Leone area, Harris said.

Samples from the 67-year-old woman's corpse tested positive for Ebola, WHO technical coordinator Margarette Lamunu said. The woman, who died and was safely buried Aug. 29, was treated at home in Kafta village, so more Ebola cases are expected, Lamunu said.

"We have sent a team to Sella Kafta village and we have already identified ten high-risk contacts that we are focusing on to stem any possible transmission," the National Ebola Response Center's (NERC) communication director Sidi Yahya Tunis said in an interview with a local radio station.

The woman had not traveled to either Liberia or Guinea — two other countries also badly hit by the worst outbreak of Ebola in history, which has killed some 11,300 people since first emerging in December 2013. Nearly 4,000 people have died in Sierra Leone alone. 

"We have already isolated the high-risk contacts and are assessing whether the village will be isolated if need be," Tunis said, adding that people should "remain calm and not be frustrated over the development." 

There had been celebratory scenes last week when Sierra Leone's last known Ebola patient was released from hospital after being cured of the virus, raising hopes the west African nation may finally have beaten the devastating epidemic.

Tunis also said that a WHO team which successfully tested an Ebola vaccine in Guinea that has been billed as possibly marking "the beginning of the end" of the virus would join NERC in Kambia to vaccinate contacts of the latest victim to "stop any possible train of transmission."

Wire services