Dozens of people in Mali have been monitored after a nurse infected with the Ebola virus died on Tuesday, said officials. Mali's health ministry said Wednesday the nurse had worked at a clinic in the capital, Bamako.
The director of the Pasteur Institute, Dramane Maiga, said in an interview with VOA that the nurse died after caring for a Guinean patient who died of the disease on Monday.
News of the deaths this week bring Mali's Ebola-linked death toll to three.The first was a 2-year-old girl who died last month. A doctor is also ill with Ebola symptoms, said Maiga.
Mali's government is reacting cautiously to the news and has not confirmed the cause of the two latest deaths.
Meanwhile, the worldwide Ebola death toll has risen to 5,147 out of 14,068 cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Another 13 deaths and 30 cases have been recorded in five other countries - Nigeria and Senegal, which have stamped out the virus, as well as Mali, Spain and the United States, it said.
In its latest update, the U.N. agency said "steep increases'' in Ebola cases continue in Sierra Leone,with 421 new infections reported in the week ending November 9.
Some material for this report came from AP and Reuters.
