Liberia is declared Ebola free

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...

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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/

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WHO SITUATION REPORT 6 May, 2015

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