A new case of Ebola has emerged hours after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the West African outbreak was over.
Advertisement
The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that despite the absence of known transmissions of the disease in over two months, there could still be cases of Ebola in the region. He expressed the WHO’s appreciation of the continued generous and most valuable technical, financial and logistical support that the worldwide community has always provided to Liberia. A country is considered free of the disease when it has passed two incubation periods of 21 days without any more cases.
He said the rapid end of the flare-up is a concrete demonstration of Liberia’s strengthened capacity to manage Ebola outbreaks.
Nearly all the victims were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, but all three countries had been declared free of the virus: Sierra Leone on November 7, Guinea late past year, and Liberia on Thursday.
Leadership Newspapers, reports that Dr Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, in a statement said “But our work is not done and vigilance is necessary to prevent new outbreaks”.
Liberia was first to be declared free of human-to-human Ebola transmission in May, only to see the virus resurface six weeks later.
“I think there’s been general acknowledgement that World Health Organization and the global community were slow at the start of this outbreak and there is no question that the disease did get away from us all collectively, and in retrospect there are a number of things that we would have done better and sooner”, Brennan said Thursday.
However a Sierra Leone health ministry spokesman told the BBC that a boy who died had tested positive for the virus. The risk of re-introduction of infection is diminishing as the virus gradually clears from the survivor population, but we still anticipate more flare-ups and must be prepared for them.
Advertisement
The Ebola epidemic killed about 11,300 people and infected 28,600 others, mostly in the three nations.
