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| A young woman in Sierra Leone tested positive for Ebola last week, just a day after west Africa celebrated the end of the outbreak ©Carl De Souza (AFP) |
Sierra Leone authorities
announced a vaccination programme for people quarantined following a new Ebola
death last week just as West Africa declared an end to the epidemic.
"Vaccination
began yesterday (Tuesday)," in places the victim, a 22-year-old student,
visited before her death on January 12 in the northern town of Magburaka,
Sierra Leone's head of medical services, Dr Brima Kargbo, told AFP.
He
said they were using the VSV-EBOV vaccine, which has already been tested in
Guinea -- one of the three countries worst affected by the outbreak, along with
Liberia and Sierra Leone -- and was also used in September in a town in
northern Sierra Leone under quarantine.
This
vaccine is the first to have proven effective, according to experts.
The
operation will last "until all the contacts are vaccinated", Kargbo
added.
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Dr Brima
Kargbo, Chief Medical Officer, Sierra Leone
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Since
Tuesday, 22 people have been vaccinated in Magburaka and five in Kambia while
figures were not yet available for the town of Lunsar, where the dead student
usually lived.
According
to medical sources, the young woman fell ill at the start of January while on
holiday in Baomoi Luma, near the border with Guinea.
The
World Health Organization announcement on Friday confirming she had tested
positive for Ebola came just a day after west Africa celebrated the end of the
outbreak with Liberia becoming the last of the three worst-hit countries in the
region to be declared free of the disease.
Among
the hundreds of identified contacts, "nobody has shown any sign or symptom
of the virus yet," Kargbo said.
In
Lunsar, however, some were opposed to receiving the vaccine and had refused to
allow health teams into their homes, according to residents.
"Some
of those quarantined barricaded their homes saying the vaccine was harmful and
could lead to other ailments," one of them said.
The Ebola outbreak, which
began in Guinea in December 2013, killed more than 11,000 people and was the
deadliest outbreak of the virus yet.
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