Mar 23, 2014 06:50 PM EDT By Jaleesa Baulkman, UniversityHerald Reporter

At least 59 people in Guinea are dead after a deadly hemorrhagic fever raged through southern communities in the West African nation, CNN reported.

Experts had been unable to identify the source of the highly contagious epidemic, whose symptoms - diarrhea, vomiting and fever - were first observed last month. UNICEF announced Saturday that the Ebola virus was the source of the epidemic, CNN reported.

The epidemic raging in southern Guinea since February 9 has killed 59 of the 80 people who have contracted the virus, Sakoba Keita, the Guinean Health Ministry's chief disease prevention officer, told Agence France Presse.

UNICEF said at least three of the victims were children.

"In Guinea, a country with a weak medical infrastructure, an outbreak like this can be devastating," Dr. Mohamed Ag Ayoya, the UNICEF representative in Guinea, said in the statement.

Health Minister Remy Lamah said Saturday that "initial test results confirm the presence of a viral hemorrhagic fever, which according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention refers to a group of viruses that affect multiple organ systems in the body," CNN reported.

According to the World Health Organization, there is no treatment or vaccine available for Ebola which kills between 25 and 90 percent of those who fall sick, depending on the strain of the virus.

According to the Guinean Health Ministry,  the disease is mainly spread from infected people, from objects belonging to ill or dead people, "and by the consumption of meat from animals in the bush," CNN reported. It is also transmitted by direct contact with blood, feces or sweat, or by sexual contact or unprotected handling of contaminated corpses.

"We are overwhelmed in the field, we are fighting against this epidemic with all the means we have at our disposal with the help of our partners but it is difficult. But we will get there," Keita told AFP.

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