No evidence that Ivory Coast's first-in-year Ebola patient, who was hailed as 'cured', actually had the dreaded disease, says WHO

The first Ebola case reported by Côte d’Ivoire in over 25 years turned out to be a false alarm, the WHO said, as “no evidence” indicated that the patient was actually suffering from the disease, declared “cured” by local health authorities.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has re-examined samples collected from the suspected Ebola patient who was discovered by the West African country back in August.

“The suspected case was a young woman who traveled from Guinea to the Ivory Coast. Since the Ivory Coast announced the case, more than 140 contacts have been made in the two countries. No one else has shown symptoms of the disease or tested positive for Ebola," UN health watchdog said in a statement.

With the new results from the laboratory in Lyon, the WHO believes that the patient did not have Ebola virus disease and further analysis is being made of the cause of her disease.

Rather embarrassing, the WHO’s assessment of the case came just days after Ivorian health authorities highlighted the alleged first in decades Ebola case as cured. Last week, Health Ministry spokesman Serge Eholie said the patient had been “declared healed” after doctors “performed on the patient two biological tests, which were negative in an interval of 48 hours."

However, the WHO stressed that Côte d’Ivoire was doing the right thing to sound the alarm, saying that all suspected cases of the deadly disease should be treated in accordance with the “no regrets” politics. The ultimately false alarm triggered the delivery of additional Ebola vaccines to the region as well as the allocation of a large sum to help the country respond quickly to the potential health emergency.

“About a dozen WHO experts were mobilized to support the country’s efforts and 5,000 Ebola vaccine doses that the WHO had helped Guinea procure were sent from Guinea to Côte d’Ivoire." said the agency. “In addition, the WHO released $ 500,000 from its Emergency Response Fund to support the country in launching a rapid response."

Ebola is a serious viral disease that is transmitted by close contact with blood or body fluids from an infected individual. It can cause liver and kidney failure as well as severe and potentially unstoppable bleeding, both internal and external. The virus has an extremely high mortality rate of about 50% on average. According to WHO data, previous outbreaks have killed up to 90% of those infected.

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