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© East News/ AP Photo/Keystone,Jean-Christophe Bott
Russian epidemiologists have made a series of discoveries, while studying the Ebola virus in Guinea, establishing a link between Ebola and hepatitis B, the head of Russia's state health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Tuesday.
"As a result of their [colleagues in Guinea] active work, we have obtained new scientific information and have established a statistically significant association between Ebola and hepatitis B. Hepatitis B was much more frequently recorded in the cases of those infected with Ebola," Anna Popova said during the second day of the Civil BRICS Forum taking place in Moscow.
Popova revealed that another way the Ebola virus could spread was through long-term preservation of the virus in breast milk.

"If we used to assume that the virus is excreted in the breast milk for no more than three weeks, now we know, and these observations are not finished yet, that the virus can be traced in the breast milk of a woman even within 58 days after the onset of the disease," Popova said.

Ebola is a deadly disease that spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids of an infected person, or though contact with contaminated clothing or possessions.

A major Ebola outbreak began in Guinea in December 2013, spreading later to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal and several other countries.

Over 27,000 people have been infected with the deadly disease so far, according to World Health Organization figures. More than 11,100 of these cases were fatal.