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 The West African nation's government said four new
suspected cases of one of the world's most lethal infectious
diseases had been reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the total
to 134.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned Guinea was
facing an unprecedented epidemic of Ebola that would test weak
health systems across West Africa.
Suspected cases of the disease — which has a fatality rate of up to
90 percent — have also been reported in neighboring Liberia and
Sierra Leone, while Gambia said two people had been quarantined
after arriving from southeastern Guinea.
The epicentre of Guinea's two-month-old outbreak has been in the
southeast, close to its main iron ore reserves. The country is also
the world's top exporter of bauxite, the raw material used in
aluminum production, and has rich deposits of gold.
"Everyone is practicing precautionary strict hygiene but there has
been no real impact on production so far," a senior executive at a
mining company told Reuters, asking not to be named.
The executive said he had been placed on extended leave, while other
companies were preventing people from entering or leaving their
mines.
MINERS CONCERNED ABOUT CAPITAL
Firms were more concerned by what was happening in the densely
populated capital Conakry than in remote mining sites in the
interior, where controls were easier to put in place, he added.
The U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO) has so far reported 12
suspected cases and four deaths in the ocean-front city of 2 million
people.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said all the cases in Conakry were
linked to one man who came from the central Guinean town of Dabola,
about 300 km (190 miles) away.
"Unfortunately, this one person infected both family members and
health care workers when he went to Conakry for medical attention
and died," Hartl told Reuters in Geneva.
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Brazilian iron ore miner Vale said its VBG joint venture with BSG
Resources (BSGR) — the mining arm of Israeli billionaire Beny
Steinmetz's business conglomerate — had pulled its six international
staff out of Guinea.
"The expatriates have been transferred temporarily to their home
countries," Vale said in an emailed statement in Brazil. "The local
employees ... have been given leave from work until there is more
accurate information about the risks of the disease."
There has not been any official statement from the chamber of mines
but the executive said mining firms had been calling each other to
discuss the best response. "People are locking down camps and
keeping movements to a minimum," the executive added.
Neighboring Senegal has closed its land borders with Guinea, and
countries across the region have taken precautionary measures,
including banning the sale and consumption of bats, a regional
delicacy but an animal believed to be a vector for the virus.
(Additional reporting by Jeb Blount in Rio de Janeiro, David Lewis
and Daniel Flynn in Dakar; writing by Daniel Flynn; editing by
Andrew Heavens)
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