More than 50 fishermen in the West African state of Guinea have been hospitalised with an unknown skin ailment, the government’s spokesman said on Friday, a day after the authorities launched a probe into the incident. Photos circling on social networks show fishermen with faces, mouths and limbs covered in pimples and lesions. “Faced with this strange phenomenon, the government has set up an inter-ministerial crisis management committee made up of representatives of the ministries of the environment, fisheries, health, transport (and) mining as well as the maritime prefecture”, spokesman Ousmane Gaoual Diallo said in a statement last week. He said a committee of scientists had taken samples of sea water in the suspect areas, and these were being analysed in laboratories in Guinea and abroad.
SOURCE: BARRON’S
Guinea’s Health Services Scramble to Diagnose Fishermen
