Mali locks down health clinic over new suspected Ebola case

One medical officer said the person suspected to have Ebola was a nurse in the clinic who died on Tuesday evening. Government officials did not comment on the lockdown, the reported death or confirm if the tests had come back positive.

Medical officials and diplomats said the nurse had been in contact with a man who arrived from Guinea and died in Mali with Ebola-like symptoms in late October. The man, whose body was returned to Guinea, was not tested for Ebola while he was being treated at the clinic, the officials said.

Mali became the sixth West African nation to record Ebola last month when a two-year-old girl died. It has not recorded any cases since then and 108 people linked to the girl were due to complete their 21-day quarantine period on Tuesday.

Mali shares an 800 km (500 mile) border with Guinea, which alongside Liberia and Sierra Leone has been worst affected by an Ebola outbreak that has killed nearly 5,000 people this year.

Even though the new case was brought in from neighbouring Guinea like the girl, aid workers and government officials said there are no links between the two cases.

A Reuters reporter said that by nightfall police had deployed in the area around the Pasteur Clinic in the ACI 2000 neighbourhood. One medical official who worked in the clinic, who asked not to be identified, said the nurse died Tuesday evening. Another doctor was ill and had been quarantined, the official said.

(Reporting by Joe Penney and Tiemoko Diallo; Writing and additional reporting by David Lewis; Editing by Grant McCool)