WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus's tweet on February 14 about suspected Ebola cases in Guinea. /@DrTedros
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Sunday that two suspected cases of Ebola had been reported in Guinea, as the country reeled from the first resurgence of the disease in five years.
"WHO has been informed of two suspected cases of Ebola in Guinea-Conakry," wrote WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Twitter.
From 2013 to 2016, the disease killed more than 2,500 people in the West African state, and a further 9,000 in neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Earlier, Guinean health minister Remy Lamah told AFP that four people had died of Ebola in the country, and officials were "really concerned" about the deaths.
One of the latest victims in Guinea was a nurse who fell ill in late January and was buried on February 1, National Health Security Agency head Sakoba Keita told local media.
"Among those who took part in the burial, eight people showed symptoms: Diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding," he said. "Three of them died and four others are in hospital."
The four deaths from Ebola hemorrhagic fever occurred in the southeast region of Nzerekore, the second populated city after the capital.
Keita also told local media that one patient had "escaped" but had been found and hospitalized in capital city of Conakry.
Members of a volunteer medical team wearing special uniforms, carry the body of an Ebola victim during the burial of 7 people died due to the Ebola virus, in Kenema, Sierra Leone, August 26, 2014. /CFP
The World Health Organization has eyed each new outbreak since 2016 with great concern, treating the most recent one in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as an international health emergency.
The DRC has faced several outbreaks of the illness, with the WHO on Thursday confirming a resurgence three months after authorities declared the end of the country's latest outbreak.
The country had declared the six-month epidemic over in November. It was the country's 11th Ebola outbreak, claiming 55 lives out of 130 cases.
The widespread use of vaccinations, which were administered to more than 40,000 people, helped curb the disease.
The 2013-16 outbreak sped up the development of a vaccine against Ebola, with a global emergency stockpile of 500,000 doses planned to respond quickly to future outbreaks, the vaccine alliance Gavi said in January.
(With input from AFP)