Conakry (AFP) - Guinea's capital Conakry was on high alert after a deadly Ebola epidemic which has killed dozens in the southern forests was confirmed to have spread to the sprawling port city of two million people.All those infected have been put into isolation at the capital's biggest hospital to avoid the highly contagious virus from getting into the population.
Aid organisations have sent dozens of workers to help the poor west African country combat the outbreak of haemorrhagic fever.
"The total number of suspected cases recorded from January to 28 March 2014 is 111 cases of haemorrhagic fever including 70 deaths ... or a fatality rate of 63 percent," said the ministry.
Most of the cases were recorded in southern Guinea, but in the past two days, it has spread to the capital.
"Intensive case investigations are underway to identify the source and route of these patients' infection, record their travel histories before arrival in Conakry and determine their period of infectivity for the purposes of contact tracing," the World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement.
Ebola had never spread among humans in west Africa before the current outbreak, but further suspected cases being investigated in Liberia and Sierra Leone could push the total death toll beyond 80. The WHO said Liberia had reported eight suspected cases of Ebola fever, including six deaths, while Sierra Leone had reported six suspected cases, five of them fatal.
No treatment or vaccine is available, and the Zaire strain detected in Guinea -- first observed 38 years ago in what is today called the Democratic Republic of Congo -- has a 90 percent death rate. But the WHO played down fears of a massive spread, pointing out that the disease typically caused much less death and sickness than influenza, and adding that it was not recommending travel restrictions.
"Outbreaks tend to be limited. But certainly we need to watch this extremely carefully because there is no treatment, there is no cure and the course of the disease is more often than not fatal," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters in Geneva.