The Malian Health Ministry said on Thursday that a two-year-old girl, who had recently been in Guinea, has tested positive for the Ebola virus.

"Mali has its first imported case of the Ebola virus," the ministry said in a statement. The child was, in fact, said to have been diagnosed on Wednesday, at a hospital in the western town of Kayes.

"The sick child and the people who were in contact with her in Kayes were immediately identified and taken care of," said Malian Health Minister Ousmane Kone.

Mali is now the sixth African nation to have reported cases of Ebola in the current outbreak. However, nearly all of the deaths have come within Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Senegal and Nigeria have both imported cases of the disease but have since been declared Ebola-free after each being free of new cases for 42 days.

Meanwhile, New York health officials confirmed that a health care worker who had returned from an Ebola-afflicted country in the last 21 days was being tested for the virus.

The man, complaining of gastrointestinal symptoms and exhibiting a temperature, was said to have been rushed from his home in Harlem by ambulance to the Bellevue Hospital.

"Our understanding is that very few people were in direct contact with him," the mayor said of the patient, identified as Dr. Craig Spencer of Harlem.

Preliminary results were expected early on Friday. Fears about Ebola have mounted in the US since a Liberian man died after flying to Texas with the disease. Two of the nurses who treated him later became sick.

The World Health Organization has said the disease has killed at least 4,877 people, with 9,936 in total being affected.

rc /av (AP, dpa, Reuters)