Health Minister, Pierre N’Gou Dimba, has announced the country first Ebola case in 25 years.

Dimba publicly shared that officials confirmed the case after testing samples from an 18-year-old female who travelled from neighbouring Guinea.

“This is an isolated and imported case,” he said, adding that the patient was currently being treated in intensive care in Abidjan, the commercial capital.

In a separate statement, the World Health Organization (WHO) said the case was Ivory Coast’s first Ebola infection since 1994.

According to WHO officials, initial investigations found the patient had travelled to Ivory Coast by road and arrived in Abidjan on August 12.

“The patient was admitted to a hospital after experiencing a fever and is currently receiving treatment,” it said.

Guinea the site of the deadliest Ebola outbreak between 2014-2016 recently experienced a four-month Ebola outbreak earlier this year that was declared over on June 19.

In light of the recent development, Ivory Coast is set to roll out vaccinations, according to health officials.

“Health workers, close relatives and contacts of the victim” will be vaccinated from Monday afternoon, using 5,000 doses sent from Guinea, spokesman Germain Mahan Sehi told newsmen.

Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. It is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, and people who live with or care for patients are most at risk.

The death rate varies from 25 to 90 percent, according to past outbreaks, although the chance of survival rises significantly if the disease is spotted at an early stage.

Combatting Ebola outbreaks mainly involves the time-honoured technique of tracing and isolating people who have been in contact with patients.

This has recently been joined by a vaccine that was extensively deployed against an epidemic that ran in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo from August 2018 to June 2020, claiming more than 2,200 lives.