Health officials in Mali are currently on high alert on the Ebola disease after it spread in the country following the death of a nurse's whose post-mortem test results turned out positive of the virus.
After missing the nurse's case, hospital officials are now reconsidering the case of a 70-year-old man brought from Guinea who had died in the capital late in the evening in what seemed to be a kidney failure.
Following the old man's death, a friend of his suspiciously died under unverified circumstances while three of his relatives who brought him over to the clinic were all admitted to an Ebola treatment facility in Guinea.
This triggered worry among Malian health authorities who, after connecting the sequence of events, had ordered for the mosque where the 70-year-old man's body was readied for burial to be disinfected on Friday, almost three weeks after his death.
Several critics expressed their disappointment with how Malian officials handled the old man's death even after health authorities announced that his death was suspected to be due to the Ebola virus that has now killed over 5,000 people in West Africa.
Before the man's case, the country, which shared a porous border with Guinea where this year's Ebola outbreak began, had been spared of the epidemic until now, where three deaths have been confirmed to be due to the disease.
Residents of the country, especially those in Mali's capital, Bamako, had expressed their utter concern about the outbreak after seeing the staggering death tolls recorded in their neighboring country.
"I feel uneasy because I have the impression that our authorities are not giving us the whole truth. There are a lot of things not being said about how the Ebola virus came to Bamako," Bamako supermarket employee Ibrahim Traore told the Associated Press.
As of the moment, Malian officials are tracking down all of the people who came in contact with the old man during his sickness and death, including his visiting family and friends as well as those who helped prepare and attended his burial.