Wednesday’s announcement came 42 days after the last case was confirmed in Liberia, the final of three West African countries with active transmission of the virus.
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World Health Organization says that all known chains of transmission in West Africa have now been stopped, but that effective surveillance and response initiatives are critical in the coming months because further flare-ups are still expected. Although the virus disappears from most of the body after a person is cured, it can remain in the semen of male survivors for as long as a year, according to WHO.
The WHO official warned that the job is still not done adding that there is still an ongoing risk of re-emergence of the disease because of the virus in some survivors.
It has been 42 days since the last Liberian Ebola patients tested negatively for Ebola two different times.
The country was the first of the three to be declared free of human-to-human Ebola transmission in May, only to see the virus resurface six weeks later.
Young Kim noted that US$450 million also came from the worldwide Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, to enable trade, investment and employment in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The epidemic, which researchers think started in December 2013, is responsible for more than 28,000 cases of Ebola and claimed the lives of more than 11,000 people.
It may be recalled that the 2014/2015 Ebola outbreak was declared over in Liberia on May 9, 2015.
Yet, reaching zero new cases in all three countries is a hugely significant milestone.
In a briefing before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City yesterday, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, said the outbreak disrupted all aspects of life in the three affected countries but showed the power of global solidarity. Unfortunately, since that time the virus re-emerged twice. “It does not mean that we have put our tools down and lay down our guys”.
Hundreds of healthcare workers in both urban and rural communities were among those killed by the disease, a major blow to medical systems in countries which already had among the lowest numbers of doctors per head of population in the world.
But even after governments, aid agencies and health workers from around the world mobilized to defeat Ebola, experts caution that it is too soon to declare the epidemic over.
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“We could have a recurrence if we don’t do those things that we need to do”, said Follay Gallah, an ambulance driver who contracted the disease in 2014.
