Health officials declare that there has been a death in Sierra Leone from the Ebola virus just hours after the World Health Organization declared the West African outbreak to be over. The long-held practices of touching very ill people and touching the dead during funerals caused the virus to race through families and to jump borders as people traveled into neighboring countries for burials.
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Rick Brennan, WHO chief of emergency risk management and humanitarian response, hailed an important milestone but told reporters in Geneva that “the job is still not done”, pointing out that there had already been 10 small flare-ups because of the persistence of the virus in survivors.
Liberia, the latest country to see the end of active transmission of Ebola, had been declared clear twice before, only for the infection to re-emerge later on.
The end to Ebola in Liberia also marked the entire West African region free of a plague that killed more than 11,000 people here, in Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The United Nations will stand firm with Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the entire region as they move ahead along the path toward social and economic recovery, it said.
In addition to child protection support, UNICEF will continue to support campaigns to maintain vigilance and awareness as well as rapid response teams that conduct active surveillance, social mobilization and early isolation and provide basic services, such as health, nutrition and water, hygiene and sanitation services.
The boy’s younger brother and father also became infected.
Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, said: “Detecting and breaking every chain of transmission has been a monumental achievement”. The latest flare-up was in November, when a 15 year old boy tested positive of Ebola and tragically died on 23 November 2015 at the Ebola treatment unit near Monrovia. This Ebola response was not limited by lack of worldwide means but by a lack of political will to rapidly deploy assistance to help communities.
“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.
Meanwhile, Liberians took sober reflections of the country’s darkest days after World Health Organization declared their country free from the disease again.
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“Today’s World Health Organization announcement is welcome news but we must learn from Ebola’s devastating impact and ensure we are better prepared for infectious disease outbreaks”, said Dr Seth Berkley, head of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an organisation that aims to increase access to vaccines in poor countries.
