The country’s neighbors Guinea and Sierra Leone are both still battling the outbreak which has killed more than 11200 people across west Africa but the coastal Margibi County where the teenager died is nowhere near either border.
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Liberia’s Health Minister Dr. Bernice Dahn has stressed the need to strengthen surveillance in the health system to adequately respond to any new Ebola case immediately.
“An Ebola case being reported in the middle part of Liberia is confusing”, said Adolphus Gbinee, Memaigar’s uncle.
The body of a 17-year-old boy from the rural area of Margibi County tested positive for the virus on Sunday and was immediately buried on the same day.
Following the resurgence of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Liberia at the weekend, the federal government on Wednesday urged Nigerians to remain vigilant and adhere to hygienic and other preventive measures to guard against the deadly disease. We also don’t know at this stage the source of infection.
DW’s Liberia correspondent Daniel Nyakohah said the dead man had fallen ill in his home village which is about an hour’s drive from the capital Monrovia. More than 500 health workers have died since the epidemic began. He said that it appears that the government is taking clear and quick steps to stop the virus from turning into an outbreak that could have been similar to past year. It took huge global involvement and local efforts from health workers and communities to put the virus under control. They were the other West African nations that were hit harder by the outbreaks of the hemorrhagic fever, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The new case was reported in Nedowein, the same village where the boy died, reports BBC News.
Last August, a Liberian national, Patrick Sawyer, imported the disease from his country to Lagos, Nigeria, resulting in the infection of 19 persons and seven deaths in the country.
“There is no further spread of the virus to any part of the country as we speak”, he said.
But as the epidemic spread – leading to a World Health Organization-estimated death toll of 11,207 – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea were prevented from hosting global football.
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Nyenswah said health officials were monitoring 175 people believed to have come into contact with the three cases, though none had yet exhibited symptoms of the disease. Numerous global aid groups left the country after the cases fell to zero in March.
