Man Who Spread Ebola to Mali Nurse Probably Infected Family

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — A nurse who became Mali’s second confirmed Ebola death may have been infected by a grand imam from Guinea who probably also transmitted the virus to family members who drove him to a clinic and a friend who visited him while he was ill.

The 25-year-old nurse died yesterday at the Pasteur Clinic in Bamako, Mali’s capital, the World Health Organization and Mali health authorities said today. She had treated the 70-year- old Guinea man, who was hospitalized for kidney failure and wasn’t tested for Ebola, the WHO said today.

The Guinea man died Oct. 27, and may have infected four family members who drove him to Mali for treatment, according to the WHO. His first wife died of an undiagnosed disease last week, while his son tested positive for Ebola yesterday and is being treated in Guinea. The man’s brother and second wife are “being managed” at an Ebola center in Guinea. A daughter also died two days ago from an undiagnosed illness, and the family declined an offer for a safe burial, the WHO said.

The death of the nurse at the Mali clinic comes just four days after Doctors Without Borders said it appeared that the country may have prevented the spread of the disease. The diagnosis that the imam’s son has the virus “further increases the likelihood that deaths in other family members were caused by Ebola,” the WHO said today in a statement.

“Intensive contact tracing is under way in both countries,” the WHO said, with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Doctors Without Borders and other groups.

Clinic Quarantine

Mali is now monitoring more than 60 people for possible exposure to the virus, including 28 health care workers who are in quarantine at the Pasteur Clinic, Markatie Daou, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said by phone. No further cases of transmission have been detected, he said.

The imam from Guinea “was identified at the border but he did not present any sign of temperature or vomiting,” Daou said. Kidney failure is “often seen” in the late stages of Ebola, the WHO said today.

His imam’s death, as well of that of a friend who visited him at the clinic and “died abruptly from an undiagnosed disease” are probably Ebola cases, with no samples available for testing, the WHO said.

The imam’s body was transported to a mosque in Bamako for ritual washing, then returned to the border village of Kouremale in Guinea for burial, the WHO said. Patients are most infectious in the late stages of the disease and immediately after death Contacts are being traced in both countries, including at the mosque, where WHO workers assume “many mourners” attended ceremonies.

The clinic in Bamako is a private facility established in 2000, according to its website. It has 32 hospital beds and an emergency room, and offers “innovative and unique care” in areas including internal medicine, surgery, neurology, cardiology and pediatrics. The imam had previously been admitted to two clinics — one in Guinea and one in Mali, according to the WHO.

Girl’s Death

Mali became the sixth country in West Africa to confirm a case of Ebola last month when a woman brought her infected two- year-old granddaughter from Guinea. The girl died on Oct. 24. The current cases are unrelated, the WHO said. The agency declares a nation Ebola-free if no new cases have been reported in 42 days, twice the incubation period. Senegal and Nigeria were cleared last month.

Mali, with a population of more than 15 million, was one of four countries that topped a list of nations the WHO said last month were most at risk for the spread of Ebola.

Ebola has killed about 5,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since December, making it the worst outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

–With assistance from Jason Gale in Melbourne and Francois Rihouay in Bamako.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Geneva at [e-mail] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at [e-mail] David Risser, Robert Valpuesta