Mali is racing to control a fresh Ebola outbreak after confirming its second death from the disease.
Officials said a nurse in the capital, Bamako, died on Tuesday after treating a man who arrived at a clinic from Guinea. The clinic is now in quarantine and under police guard.
The dead man was not related to Mali’s first death, a two-year-old girl travelling home from Guinea last month. There had not been any confirmed cases since then and 108 people linked to the girl completed their 21-day quarantine period on Tuesday.
Ebola emerged in Guinea in December, spreading to neighbouring Liberia and then Sierra Leone, infecting at least 13,000 people. Almost 5,000 people have died, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), which warns that the true scale of the epidemic could be far worse.
The nurse in Bamako is thought to have been infected by an imam from Guinea who died in late October. He was not tested for Ebola in Mali and his body was returned to Guinea without any precautions being taken, according to Reuters, which said a doctor has also fallen ill and been quarantined.
Ebola victims are contagious for up to three days after death, raising the prospect of further infections. In a statement on Twitter, Mali’s information minister, Mahamadou Camara, said “prevention measures” were being taken, but he gave no details.
WHO said Ebola cases are “still skyrocketing” in the west of Sierra Leone, including the capital, Freetown. In Liberia, however, the government reports that new cases have dropped from a daily peak of more than 500 in September to around 50. Cases have been identified on a much smaller scale in Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the US.
The virus kills around 70% of its victims, often shutting down their organs and causing unstoppable bleeding.
