Healers Cure Mistrust in Guinea’s Health System after Horrors of Ebola

On 17 October 2014 in Guinea, a sign reads, in French, “CENTRE DE TRAITEMENT EBOLA,” meaning “Ebola treatment centre,” outside an Ebola virus disease (EVD) case management centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières in the town of Guéckédou, in Guéckédou Prefecture, Nzérékoré Region. The town is near the village of Meliandou, where, through retrospective case-finding, 2-year-old Emile Ouamouno was found to be the first person to have contracted EVD in what would ultimately become the largest-ever outbreak of the disease. Emile passed away in December 2013, followed shortly thereafter by his 4-year-old sister, Philomène, and then his mother, both of whom also contracted the virus. By late October in West Africa, Guinea, as well as Liberia and Sierra Leone, continued to experience widespread and intense EVD transmission. Following successful response to an initial case or cases imported from a country with widespread and intense transmission, Senegal and Nigeria were declared free of EVD on 17 and 19 October, respectively. Mali reported its first confirmed case of EVD on 23 October; contact monitoring and tracing are still ongoing.