Mali’s new Ebola case a worry for region

BAMAKO, Mali — Mali confirmed Saturday a new case of Ebola and said two more suspected patients are being tested, raising concern about a further spread of the disease that has already killed at least five people in the country.

The patient who tested positive “was placed in an isolation center for intensive treatment,” said a government statement distributed Saturday. No details about the patient were provided.

Mali officials are monitoring 310 people to limit the spread of the disease, said the statement.

Mali’s five confirmed Ebola deaths are linked to a 70-year-old imam who was taken to the capital, Bamako, from Guinea, where the regional Ebola epidemic first began.

At a regional meeting in September, officials identified more than a dozen countries in West and Central Africa that were at risk of being affected by the ongoing outbreak, the worst ever recorded.

“The new cases in Mali remind us that no country in the region is immune to Ebola,” Manuel Fontaine, UNICEF regional director for West and Central Africa, said in a statement Friday.

The World Health Organization says more than 5,400 people have died in the current outbreak, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Also on Saturday, the first group of volunteers from Britain’s National Health Service arrived in Sierra Leone as concern rises about the worsening situation there.

More than 30 staff members of the agency, including general practitioners and nurses, were expected to stay in Freetown, the capital, for one week of training before moving to treatment centers across the country, Britain’s Department for International Development said in a statement.

They join nearly 1,000 British soldiers, scientists and aid workers already in the country participating in the Ebola fight, International Development Secretary Justine Greening said.

“To beat Ebola we desperately need the experience and dedication of skilled doctors and nurses to care for the thousands of sick and dying patients who are not receiving the treatment they need,” Greening said.

Sierra Leone has recorded more than 1,200 Ebola deaths, and only 13 percent of Sierra Leone’s Ebola patients were being isolated, according to a WHO report released last week.

A Swiss hospital said a Cuban doctor who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone is in a stable condition after nearly two days of treatment.

Felix Baez Sarria was flown to Geneva and was able to walk off the transport plane in a protective suit and mask after landing Thursday night.

The Geneva University Hospital said Saturday that “today his health status is stable, although he remains in a serious medical condition.”

He is being treated in a special room in an area isolated from the rest of the hospital.

Baez, a member of a medical team Cuba sent to Sierra Leone, caught the disease when he rushed to help a patient who was falling over.

On Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that despite recent signs of progress in Liberia and elsewhere, the Ebola outbreak would take “until the middle of next year” to contain.

Liberia has recorded the most cases and deaths out of any country, though the spread of the disease has fallen off considerably in recent weeks and the government lifted a state of emergency earlier this month.

On Friday, however, Liberia’s police force ordered that all public rallies, demonstrations and gatherings be banned until the country is declared free of the disease.

The only exception, the police said in a bulletin read on state radio, was campaign rallies related to Senate elections scheduled for Dec. 16.