You are here

Liberia is declared Ebola free

Primary tabs

The World Health Organization announces the end of Ebola in Liberia, but the epidemic continues in nearby Sierra Leone and Guinea.

(Scroll down for text of WHO announcement and WHO May 6 situation report.)

A girl in the West Point township in Monrovia, Liberia, where life has begun to return to normal.

NATURE.COM  by Declad Butler and Erika Check Hayden   <ay 9, 2015

iberia is the first of the three main countries affected by Ebola to be free of the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today (9 May), marking the end of the 15-month-long epidemic in the country. But the epidemic continues in nearby Sierra Leone and Guinea, and the WHO is warning against complacency, highlighting the risk of further flare ups and geographical spread.

"Today’s announcement is a testament to all of the extraordinary Liberians and our global partners who worked tirelessly over the past 15 months to fight Ebola," says Rajesh Panjabi, who is the chief executive of Last Mile Health, a non-profit organization that operates in Monrovia and Boston, Massachusetts, and an associate physician at Harvard Medical School. "This is a great achievement, but there is still much work to be done to strengthen Liberia’s health system so that an epidemic like this will never happen again."

The last person in Liberia known to be infected with the disease died on 27 March and was buried the following day. That means that as of today, 42 days have elapsed since the burial — the delay that the WHO uses to declare a country Ebola-free and twice the maximum incubation period for the disease....

A nagging concern is that most of the newly reported cases, in particular in Guinea, are individuals who are not among the listed contacts of people known to be infected, suggesting that chains of transmission continue to go undetected...

Read complete story.
http://www.nature.com/news/liberia-is-declared-ebola-free-1.17513

WHO STATEMENT ANNOUNCING END OF EBOLA OPUTBREAK IN LIBERIA

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2015/liberia-ends-ebola/en/

-0-

WHO SITUATION REPORT 6 May, 2015

http://apps.who.int/ebola/en/current-situation/ebola-situation-report-6-may-2015

Country / Region Tags: 
General Topic Tags: 
Problem, Solution, SitRep, or ?: 
Groups this Group Post belongs to: 
- Private group -

Comments

WHO MEDIA CENTRE                                                                             May 9, 2015
Excerpts from WHO statement.
" ...It is a tribute to the government and people of Liberia that determination to defeat Ebola never wavered, courage never faltered. Doctors and nurses continued to treat patients, even when supplies of personal protective equipment and training in its safe use were inadequate. Altogether, 375 health workers were infected and 189 lost their lives.

Local volunteers, who worked in treatment centres, on burial teams, or as ambulance drivers, were driven by a sense of community responsibility and patriotic duty to end Ebola and bring hope back to the country’s people. As the number of cases grew exponentially, international assistance began to pour in. All these efforts helped push the number of cases down to zero....

...The government is fully aware of the need to remain on high alert and has the experience, capacity, and support from international partners to do so. WHO will maintain an enhanced staff presence in Liberia until the end of the year as the response transitions from outbreak control, to vigilance for imported cases, to the recovery of essential health services....

Read full WHO statement.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2015/liberia-ends-ebola/en/

      

Women celebrated in Monrovia, Liberia, on Saturday as officials declared the Ebola outbreak in their country over. Credit Ahmed Jallanzo/European Pressphoto Agency

Liberia Is Declared Free of Ebola, but Officials Sound Note of Caution

nytimes.com - by Sheri Fink - May 9, 2015

The World Health Organization declared Liberia free of Ebola on Saturday, making it the first of the three hardest-hit West African countries to bring a formal end to the epidemic.

“The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia is over,” the W.H.O. said in a statement read by Dr. Alex Gasasira, the group’s representative to Liberia, in a packed conference room at the emergency command center in Monrovia, the capital.

Just before Dr. Gasasira’s statement, Luke Bawo, an epidemiologist, showed a map depicting all of Liberia in green with the number 42 superimposed on it.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

 

howdy folks
Page loaded in 0.462 seconds.