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An ambulance carrying
Dr. Martin Salia, a surgeon working in Sierra Leone who had been diagnosed with
Ebola, drives to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb., Saturday, Nov. 15,
2014. Dr. Salia is the third Ebola patient at the Omaha hospital and the 10th
person with Ebola to be treated in the U.S. (AP Photo/Margery A. Beck)
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It all started with a sick nurse, whose positive
test for Ebola came only after her death. In a busy clinic that treats Mali's
elite as well as wounded U.N. peacekeepers, who was the patient who had
transmitted the virus?
Soon hospital officials were taking a second look at
the case of a 70-year-old man who had died after being brought to the capital
late at night from Guinea suffering from kidney failure. A friend who visited
him had later died under suspicious circumstances, too.
It wasn't renal disease, they then realized. The
70-year-old man had Ebola and all three of the relatives who brought him to the
clinic that night had all since been admitted to an Ebola treatment center back
home in Guinea, too.
Fox News reports on Friday, Malian health authorities went to
disinfect the mosque where the 70-year-old's body was prepared for burial --
nearly three weeks ago. Already some are criticizing the Malian government for
being too slow to react when health authorities had announced his death as a
suspected Ebola case earlier in the week.
"It's been 18 days since the Guinean man sick
with Ebola died here. It's just too late," said Koumou Keita, his face
full of worry.
For nearly a year, Mali had been spared the virus
now blamed for killing more than 5,000 people across West Africa despite the
fact the country shared a porous land border with Guinea, the country where the
epidemic first erupted.
Now there are least three confirmed Ebola deaths,
and two others suspected deaths in Mali's capital, Bamako. Residents here who
have seen the carnage from Ebola in neighboring Guinea now fear the worst.
"I feel uneasy because I have the impression
that our authorities are not giving us the whole truth," said Ibrahim
Traore, who works at a supermarket in the capital. "There are a lot of
things not being said about how the Ebola virus came to Bamako."
Health officials now must try to track down not only
family and friends who visited the 70-year-old man at his hospital bed, but
also the scores of people who prepared his body for burial and attended his
funeral. Teams of investigators are also headed to the border community where
authorities believe the Patient Zero in the Bamako cluster -- the 70-year-old
man -- first fell ill.
"The future of Ebola in Mali will depend on the
quality of the surveillance of these contacts. If they are rigorously followed,
and any subsequent cases are quickly identified and isolated, the battle will
be won. But if there are failures in the process, it will lead to further
contamination and further problems," said Ibrahima-Soce Fall, Mali's WHO
representative.
Among those placed under quarantine are about 20
members of the U.N. peacekeeping force who had had been treated for battlefield
wounds at the Bamako hospital where the dead nurse had worked. The peacekeepers
had been based in the north of the country, where they have been trying to
stabilize a vast region where jihadists ruled until a French-led war in 2013.
In rencet years Mali already has suffered a
separatist rebel insurgency, a coup that overthrew its longtime leader and a
war against jihadists. No Ebola threatens to be another source of misery if it
is not contained.
"Ebola
could case many deaths here in Mali, said Aminata Samake, who works at a bank
in the capital. "We have a tradition of living closely together that could
contribute to a huge contamination. Take the example of public transport -- you
find people crammed into a bus, one on top of the other. Large families share
the same plates, even the same glasses for tea."
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