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Suspected Ebola case turns out to be malaria

11:27 20/08/2014

A 13-year-old boy from Guinea currently in quarantine in Ostend does not have Ebola, the hospital’s chief of staff has announced.

The boy was admitted to AZ Damiaan on Sunday suffering from a high fever. He had been sent to Belgium last week by his father because of the serious situation in his homeland Guinea in West Africa. Guinea, together with Sierra Leone and Liberia, is the grip of an Ebola virus epidemic that has killed more than 1,200 people this year.

The hospital took the necessary precautions, placing the boy in quarantine in intensive care while tests were carried out, According to chief of staff Mario Schurgers (pictured), the boy’s temperature dropped Monday night from a dangerous high of 39 degrees to a “reassuring” 37.3 degrees. “That means that an Ebola infection can be ruled out with 100% certainty,” he said.

The boy is now in the hospital’s paediatric ward, being treated for what is now thought to be a malaria infection.

 

photo courtesy AZ Damiaan

Written by Alan Hope