Guinean student exports Ebola to Senegal, riot in Guinea

Senegal became the fifth West African country to be touched by the world’s worst Ebola outbreak on Friday, while riots broke out in neighbouring Guinea where infection rates are rising fast.

 Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck said  Senegal’s first case was a Guinean student who turned up for treatment at a hospital in the capital Dakar on Tuesday, concealing the fact that he had close contact with victims in his home country.

Authorities in Guinea had been searching for the young man for three weeks since he evaded surveillance, the minister said. Tests at the Pasteur Institute in Dakar showed him positive for the disease.

“We are tracing his whole itinerary and also identifying anyone who had contact with the patient who now that he has been diagnosed is much more cooperative and supplied all the necessary information,” the minister said.

In an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, Senegal last week banned flights with three of the affected countries and shut its land border with Guinea.

In the Guinean city of Nzerekore, riots broke out on Thursday night over rumours that health workers had infected people with the Ebola virus, a Red Cross official and residents said.

A crowd of young men, some armed with clubs and knives, set up barricades across the southern city on Thursday and threatened to attack the hospital before security forces moved in to restore order.

Gunshots were fired and several people were injured, said Youssouf Traore, president of the Guinean Red Cross.

“A rumour, which was totally false, spread that we had sprayed the market in order to transmit the virus to locals,” Traore said. “People revolted and resorted to violence, prompting soldiers to intervene.”

Local Red Cross workers had to flee to the military camp with their medical equipment. Another resident said the security forces were preventing people leaving their neighbourhoods overnight. More than 400 people have died in Guinea, though the infection rate is slower than in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 The deadly virus has defied efforts by governments to control it, prompting the leading charity fighting the outbreak Medicins Sans Frontieres to call for the U.N. Security Council to take charge of efforts to stop the epidemic.