An African man being treated at a Kansas hospital has malaria and not Ebola like medical officials fist suspected, The Wichita Eagle reported.
The man from Ghana - one of the West African countries that has not been struck by the worst Ebola outbreak in history - was admitted to the Galichia Heart Hospital with a fever last Wednesday night.
Malaria causes flu-like symptoms that are similar to Ebola, including a fever. Malaria is caused by the bite of a mosquito that is infected with a parasite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The disease can be fatal, but infection and death can be prevented with treatment.
Ebola, spread though contact with bodily fluids, has killed over 4,000 people in West Africa since the start of the outbreak at the beginning of the year, according to the World Health Organization. The hardest hit areas are Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Other cases have been reported in Nigeria and Senegal, but those appear to have been contained.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly 40 people have died from a different strain of Ebola, the WHO said according to Al Jazeera.
The first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., Thomas Eric Duncan, died from the virus at a Dallas, Texas, hospital last week after traveling from Liberia.
On Thursday, CDC director Thomas Frieden called for a faster response to the epidemic. The U.S. has already sent aid, medical supplies and a team of soldiers to West Africa, but health officials continue to warn that the world response to the deadly disease is not enough.
"In the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this has been AIDS," said Frieden, according to CNN. "Speed is the most important variable here."
