Conakry

A health worker wearing Ebola protection gear at a Biosecure Emergency Care Unit treatment center in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo.CreditCreditBaz Ratner/Reuters

Donald G. McNeil Jr. - NYTimes - August 12th 2019

In a development that transforms the fight against Ebola, two experimental treatments are working so well that they will now be offered to all patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo, scientists announced on Monday.

The antibody-based treatments are quite powerful — “Now we can say that 90 percent can come out of treatment cured,” one scientist said — that they raise hopes that the disastrous epidemic in eastern Congo can soon be stopped and future outbreaks more easily contained.

Malian health authorities say they are searching for two women who left Guinea after having had contact with a recent Ebola case.

Dr. Keni Diarra, head doctor at the health center in Kenieba in the Kayes region, said Wednesday the two Guinean women came to Mali Sunday. He said they are suspected to be in Hamdallaye, a village in Kayes.

The World Health Organization says there have been eight cases of Ebola and seven deaths since late February in Guinea, flare-ups that came months after the nation was declared Ebola-free.

In Mali eight people were infected with Ebola and six of them died in 2014 before it was declared free from transmissions in January 2015.

More than 11,300 people, mostly in West Africa, have died from Ebola since December 2013.