Experts recently reported that the ongoing Ebola epidemic in Guinea has caused doctors to shift their attention to the deadly disease and forsake others that are less-deadly diseases like malaria. The report claim that more than 74,000 malaria cases were untreated in 2014.

Reports claim that if left untreated, the upsurge of death caused by malaria will exceed that of Ebola in the coming years.

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According to Zee News, malaria patients in Guinea were either too scared to seek help or clinics were closed due to the Ebola crisis. Ebola death related cases in Guinea will be topped by malaria cases, experts added.

Currently, there are 2,444 reported cases of malaria in Guinea.

Malaria is a life threatening illness caused by parasites carried by mosquitoes and transferred to humans through biting. According to the World Health Organization, malaria was the culprit to an estimated 584,000 deaths among children in Africa in 2013.

Malaria and Ebola patients both exhibit similar symptoms, most of the time fever. The ongoing Ebola epidemic scares patient to seek medical help in order to get their symptoms diagnosed. The result, most patients die without getting any help and in some cases their symptoms were misdiagnosed.

Dr. Mateusz Plucinski together with his colleagues have analyzed how many patients are going to seek help to clinics in Guinea before and during the Ebola epidemic emerged in early 2014, according to WN.com.

In the most Ebola-affected districts they sampled 60 health facilities and on the other hand 60 districts in regions unaffected by Ebola. Before and during the epidemic, they looked at malaria prescriptions.

Ebola outpatient attendances fell dramatically -by nearly half in certain age groups in the worst- in affected areas. As for malaria cases, the number treated dropped by up to 69 percent.

According PeaceFM, there were 10 reported cases of Ebola in Guinea in most recent week for which there are gathered data. In early 2015, cases were recorded in the hundreds.

Dr. Franco Pagnoni, from the WHO's Global Malaria Programme, "Untreated malaria cases had placed an additional burden on an already overburdened health system in countries affected by Ebola. It was important to ensure that containment and prevention activities in Ebola were accompanied by efforts to detect, treat and prevent malaria in order to save more lives,"

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