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The vaccine program was launched after the country’s first known case was recorded since 1994.
The Ministry of Health said that after the country recorded its first known case since 1994, Côte d’Ivoire will launch a vaccination against Ebola.
Spokesperson Germain Mahan Sehi told AFP that “health workers, close relatives and contacts of the victims” will start vaccination on Monday afternoon, using 5,000 doses of vaccine sent from Guinea.
Ivorian health workers have previously stated that vaccination of the “target group” had begun on Sunday.
Authorities said on Saturday that the case was recorded in Abidjan, the economic center of Côte d’Ivoire, and an 18-year-old Guinean woman arrived in the country by road from Labe, Guinea, on Wednesday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said that genetic sequencing of the virus sample will determine whether the case is related to the recent Ebola outbreak in neighboring Guinea.
It said that the fact that it happened in an area with more than 4 million people is “very worrying”.
The Ebola virus can cause severe fever and in the worst case can cause unstoppable bleeding. It is spread through close contact with body fluids, and those who live with or care for the patient face the greatest risk.
According to past outbreaks, the mortality rate ranges from 25% to 90%, although if the disease is detected early, the chances of survival will increase significantly.
The fight against Ebola mainly involves the long-established technology of tracking and isolating people who have been in contact with patients.
A vaccine was recently added, which was widely used to fight the epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo from August 2018 to June 2020, killing more than 2,200 lives.
The discovery in Côte d’Ivoire occurred nearly two months after the WHO announced the end of the second Ebola outbreak in Guinea. The Ebola outbreak began last year and caused 12 deaths.
Five WHO experts were sent from Guinea to help train dozens of Ivorian health workers to use vaccines.
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