CONAKRY: An Ebola outbreak which started in Guinea in February, infecting 16 people and killing 12, has been declared over, the health ministry and the World Health Organization said on Saturday.

Health authorities were able to move swiftly to tackle the resurgence of the virus, which causes severe bleeding and organ failure and is spread through contact with body fluids, after lessons learned from previous outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Based on the lessons learned from the 2014-16 outbreak and through rapid, coordinated response efforts... Guinea managed to control the outbreak and prevent its spread beyond its borders," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

The Ebola outbreak in 2014-2016 killed 11,300 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.