Makokou, Gabon - Medical officials said on Saturday they had confirmed a new Ebola case and suspected another in northeastern Gabon, raising fears the deadly disease could still be spreading weeks after an outbreak began in Central Africa.
Laboratory tests confirmed a 16-year-old boy admitted last week at Makokou's hospital was infected with Ebola, which has already killed 21 people in Gabon and neighbouring Republic of Congo, regional health director Prosper Abessolo Mengue said. Another patient was admitted on Friday with symptoms of the disease, including fever, diarrhea and vomiting.
Neither patient is known to have had contact with any of the previous victims, raising the possibility that there are still more unidentified cases.
"This is very worrying," said Dr Julien Meyong, medical chief of the hospital in Makokou, about 580 kilometres east of the capital, Libreville.
Medical officials have identified 18 Ebola cases in this remote part of Gabon, of whom 15 have died since the outbreak began in late October, according to government figures. Twelve more suspected cases have been identified on the other side of the border in Republic of Congo, where six people have died.
The affected region is one of the most thinly populated in both countries. It is covered by vast forests with tiny villages inhabited by Pygmies and other hunter tribes.
A team of medical experts from the World Health Organisation and Gabon's health ministry has been working with military doctors and local officials to trace victims, treat patients and educate the population about the disease. The international aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, is also helping to contain the virus.
Medical experts are currently monitoring 206 people - 91 in Gabon and 115 in Republic of Congo - who may have had contact with those infected with Ebola. WHO had anticipated one or more cases could develop among these contacts, but Meyong said medical experts would now have to search for new ones to explain how the disease could have spread to the latest victims.
Everyone who had contact with the two would also have to be added to the list.
Ebola is one of the most deadly viral diseases known to humankind. The virus is passed through contact with bodily fluids, but is not airborne.
There is no cure, and death occurs in 50 to 90 percent of those who contract it - usually due to massive blood loss through all the body's orifices. But the disease usually kills its victims faster than it can spread, burning out before it can reach too far.
WHO says over 800 people have died of Ebola since the virus was first identified in 1976 in western Sudan and in a nearby region of Congo. The disease last struck in Uganda, killing 224 people last year. - Sapa-AP