Guinea dispatches equipment to contain outbreak of Ebola

By Saliou Samb CONAKRY (Reuters) – Health officials fighting an outbreak of Ebola in Guinea on Sunday dispatched specialised medical equipment, imposed restrictions on funerals and sought to contain panic to prevent the fever from spreading. There have been 29 confirmed deaths from the haemorrhagic fever among 59 people killed by a mysterious illness in southeastern Guinea since early February, international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said. U.N. health officials have expressed concern that the disease, which has a fatality rate of 90 percent and has not been recorded in the West African state before, may spread to Sierra Leone after cases showing similar symptoms, including diarrhoea, vomiting and bleeding, were reported there. At least five of the dead in Guinea have been medical officials, including the head of the regional hospital in Macenta, at the heart of the crisis, some 800 km (500 miles) from Guinea’s capital Conakry.