CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) – Ebola could continue to spread in West Africa for months in one of the most challenging outbreaks of the disease the international community has ever faced, health experts said yesterday.

Dr Keiji Fukuda of the World Health Organisation said that while other outbreaks have seen more cases, the current one is remarkable for the wide area over which it has spread – from Guinea’s remote tropical forests to the country’s capital and over the border to Liberia. The fact that it has touched the teeming Guinean capital, Conakry, is also a concern.

More than 100 deaths in Guinea and Liberia have been linked to the current outbreak, which may have begun in January, said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation (WHO). Because those who died early on in the outbreak will never be tested, the precise start of the outbreak will never be known, he said.