West Africa faced its first known Ebola resurgence since the end of a devastating outbreak in 2016 on Sunday, with Guinea responding to what its health chief called an "epidemic" after seven cases were confirmed.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic stretching health resources across the world, Guinea and the World Health Organisation (WHO) say they are better prepared to deal with Ebola now than they were five years ago because of good progress on vaccines.
The WHO said it would rush assistance to Guinea and seek to ensure it received adequate inoculations, as neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone went on high alert as a precaution.
"Very early this morning, the Conakry laboratory confirmed the presence of the Ebola virus," Guinea health chief Sakoba Keita said after an emergency meeting in the capital.
Health Minister Remy Lamah had earlier spoken of four deaths and it was not clear why the new toll was lower.
The WHO is on full alert and is in contact with the manufacturer of a vaccine
The cases marked the first known resurgence of Ebola in West Africa since a 2013-2016 epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people, the worst involving the virus on record.
That epidemic also began in Guinea in the same south-east region where the new cases have been found.
The virus, believed to reside in bats, was first detected in 1976 in Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mr Keita, head of the National Agency for Health Security, said one person had died in January in Gouecke, south-east Guinea, near the Liberian border.
The victim was buried on February 1 "and some people who took part in this funeral began to have symptoms of diarrhoea, vomiting, bleeding and fever a few days later", he said.
Some samples tested by a laboratory set up by the European Union in Gueckedou in the same region confirmed Ebola on Friday, said Mr Keita.
He said Guinea was now in an "Ebola epidemic situation".
Patients have been isolated and an investigation was ordered to determine the home villages of all who took part in the burial to carry out contact tracing, said Mr Keita.
Experts will also work to determine the outbreak's origin, which could be a previously cured patient whose disease relapsed or transmission by "wild animals, in particular bats", said Mr Keita.
According to the health chief, diagnosis time has been reduced to less than two weeks compared with three-and-a-half months in 2014.
Alfred George Ki-Zerbo, the WHO representative, said the agency was rapidly sending "crucial assets" to help Guinea.
"The WHO is on full alert and is in contact with the manufacturer [of a vaccine] to ensure the necessary doses are made available as quickly as possible to help fight back."
The WHO has viewed each new Ebola outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the most recent one in central Africa's Democratic Republic of the Congo as an international health emergency.
Guinea's neighbours Liberia and Sierra Leone announced high alert despite not recording any infections as yet.
The WHO said it was already helping the two countries to raise their vigilance and had already been in touch with other countries in the region including Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast.
DR Congo has faced several outbreaks of the illness, and a week ago announced a resurgence three months after authorities declared the end of the country's previous episode.
The 2013-2016 West Africa outbreak speeded up the development of a vaccine against Ebola, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia bore the brunt of the previous epidemic.
Like many countries in West Africa, Guinea has limited health resources. It has also recorded about 15,000 Covid-19 cases and 84 deaths.
"I'm worried as a human being, but I'm remaining calm because we managed the first epidemic and vaccination is possible," said Mr Lamah.
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
FIGHT%20CARD
%3Cp%3EAnthony%20Joshua%20v%20Otto%20Wallin%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20heavyweight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EDeontay%20Wilder%20v%20Joseph%20Parker%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20heavyweight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EDmitry%20Bivol%20v%20Lyndon%20Arthur%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20light%20heavyweight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EDaniel%20Dubois%20v%20Jarrell%20Miller%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20heavyweight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EFilip%20Hrgovic%20v%20Mark%20de%20Mori%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20heavyweight%C2%A0%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EArslanbek%20Makhmudov%20v%20Agit%20Kabayel%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20heavyweight%C2%A0%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EFrank%20Sanchez%20v%20Junior%20Fa%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20heavyweight%C2%A0%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EJai%20Opetaia%20v%20Ellis%20Zorro%2C%2012%20rounds%2C%20cruiserweight%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Joker: Folie a Deux
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Todd Phillips
Rating: 2/5
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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