WHO Looking into First Ebola Case in Mali

Pawel Gaul/iStockphoto/Thinkstock(KAYES, Mali) — The World Health Organization is looking into the first case of Ebola found in the African country of Mali, which involves a two-year-old child who traveled from Guinea with her grandmother.

According to the WHO, the child and her grandmother left Guinea on Oct. 19. Prior to leaving, the child is believed to have been bleeding from the nose, which the WHO notes is a sign that the girl “was symptomatic during their travels through Mali.”

The pair traveled by public bus from Keweni, Guinea, through numerous towns, stopped for two hours in Bamako, the capital of Mali, and continued on to Kayes, a city of 128,000 people more than 300 miles from Bamako.

“Multiple opportunities for exposure occurred when the child was visibly symptomatic,” the WHO said.

The child was examined by a health care worker in Kayes on Oct 20, and was admitted to the pediatric ward the next day with multiple symptoms including a fever and bleeding. She initially tested negative for malaria, but positive for typhoid fever. Further testing confirmed Ebola on Oct. 23.

The WHO is looking into the possibility that the grandmother traveled from her home in Mali to a funeral in Kissidougou in southern Guinea before making the trip back with the child.

“WHO is treating the situation in Mali as an emergency,” a release said. “The child’s symptomatic state during the bus journey is especially concerning, as it presented multiple opportunities for exposures — including high-risk exposures — involving many people.”

The WHO data released Saturday indicated that the total number of Ebola cases worldwide have hit 10,141. Of those infected with the disease, 4,922 have reported died. Those figures include six affected countries — Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Spain and the United States — as well as Nigeria and Senegal, where the disease outbreaks have been declared over.

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