In total, the disease claimed more than 11,000 lives during its outbreak past year, and nearly all of those deaths occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Tracing these contacts, and quarantining accordingly, is probably the most significant factor in preventing the spread of the disease.
Advertisement
“We are all held hostage in the building”, the official said, adding that police in the compound were not doing much to quell the protests.
There were more fears that the herbalist who first attended to the 17-year-old was on the run, a situation that has created tension among Liberian authorities.
Spokesman for the health department in Margibi County told Agence France-Presse, “We are still waiting for additional blood tests but that two people who had physical contact with the boy had contracted the virus”.
While the country struggles to trace the source of the new two confirmed cases, health workers have staged a protest at the Ministry of Health demanding hazard benefits.
Liberia had been declared officially Ebola-free on May 9 after it had gone 42 days with no new cases.
There are now no indications that the case was imported from a neighboring country and Margibi County is far from the epidemic’s remaining hotspots.
With health officials not discovering the teenager had Ebola until after he passed away means that he might have passed the virus to family or friends.
In past outbreaks, humans have been infected by eating monkey flesh and some residents of Mr Memaigar’s village said that those showing symptoms of Ebola had recently eaten a dog, a common practice in Liberia.
Moses Massaquoi, the head of the Liberian government’s Ebola crisis management department, said 14 conventional health workers among the identified contacts had placed themselves in voluntary quarantine.
The worldwide medical teams that played such a key role in bringing Ebola outbreaks under control in Sierra Leone and Guinea as well as in Liberia will surely be back on standby as the World Health Organization assesses the dangers of this new case.
Ebola may start flaring up again in West Africa as a country previously rid of the virus is facing new cases.
The chiefs commended Mr. Kollie for being patriotic, urging the government to deploy surveillance teams along the borders with Guinea and Sierra Leone as increased cases continue to be reported from the two neighbors.
In the wake of new infections, Liberia has revived the daily Ebola emergency coordination chaired by its Deputy Health Minister, Tolbert Nyenswah. We have created a timeline to track the development of the virus’ intercontinental spread.
Advertisement
This is the only known case in Liberia for now, according to Liberia Ebola response chief Nyenswah.
