Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has now reportedly killed five people as the disease continues to spread. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that since the first virus Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone has been confirmed, five people have died.

According to the agency, this signals a new expansion of the disease. Meanwhile, regional officials said that though five died in the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, the situation has been brought under control.

Reuters reports that Ebola is a hemorrhagic fever with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent, and it is believed to have killed around 185 people already in neighboring Guinea and Liberia since March when it first made its lethal appearance in West Africa.

There have been several suspected cases of Ebola recorded previously in Sierra Leone. This was reportedly early on in the West African outbreak. However, the suspicions later tested negative for the disease.

The WHO said in a statement posted on their website, the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone was located in an area along the country's border with Guinea's Guéckédou prefecture. This is where some of the earliest cases of the disease were recorded. The statement said, "Preliminary information received from the field indicates that one laboratory-confirmed case and five community deaths have been reported from Koindu chiefdom."

The WHO is reportedly deploying six experts to the area along with essential supplies. Reuters reports that the West African outbreak spread from a remote corner of Guinea to the capital, Conakry, and into Liberia. This caused panic in the region which still struggles with weak healthcare systems and porous borders.

According to the WHO, before the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, a total of 258 clinical cases have already been recorded in Guinea. Since the outbreak was first identified as Ebola, the clinical cases included 174 deaths - 95 confirmed, 57 probable and 57 suspected.

There have been no new detected cases of Ebola since April 26 in Conakry, where an outbreak could pose the biggest threat of an epidemic because the city's role as an international travel hub.

However, Guinean health officials have just announced that two new confirmed cases of Ebloa have been confirmed on Friday in an area previously untouched by the virus. 

Even before the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, the disease is believed to have already killed 11 people in Liberia.

Ebola is endemic to Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Uganda and South Sudan. Scientists have believed initially that Central Africa's Zaire strain of the disease was responsible for the infections in Guinea and Liberia.

Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone came after researchers to later publish a study saying the West African outbreak was caused by a new strain of Ebola.