All news

Russian virologists unfolding lab in Guinea to fight with Ebola fever

The group that came from Russia Friday consists of nine persons - eight researchers and a technician

RABAT, August 25, /ITAR-TASS/. Russian microbiology and epidemics experts who arrived in Guinea last week to assist in curbing an epidemic cause by Ebola virus are unfolding a mobile laboratory in the West-African country, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Conakry told Itar-Tass.

“The unfolding is taking place at Donka hospital in Canakry,” the diplomat said.

The group that came from Russia Friday consists of nine persons - eight researchers and a technician.

"A team of Russian virologists and bacteriologists arrived in Conakry (Guinean capital city) August 22 and got down to business in close contact with the Russian embassy, the local healthcare agencies and representatives of the World Health Organization," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday.

"We are confident that Russia's active engagement in the international collective efforts will bring sizable contribution to the eradication of the outbreak of this lethal disease."

A decision to dispatch a specialized team of highly qualified experts in virology and epidemiology to western Africa, which has been stricken by an unprecedented epidemic of Ebola fever, was taken by the Russian government.

The top-notch mobile lab they took along with them is meant for doing emergency tests on the spot.

The experts are staff members of the Louis Pasteur Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in St Petersburg. They visited Guinea in mid-July.

“We’re sending the top-rate professionals there,” Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said Thursday.

The epidemic has carried away more than 1,000 human lives and has left about 1,900 people infected. No universally recognized or certified vaccine for the Ebola virus, the endemic source of which is located in Western Africa, exists today.