Africa’s Ebola outbreak over but ‘vigilance’ needed — United Nations health agency

The World Health Organization announced Thursday that the two-year Ebola epidemic in West Africa has effectively ended, ending the world’s worst outbreak of the disease.

However, the organization warned in a statement that “more flare-ups are expected and that strong surveillance and response systems will be critical in the months to come”.

It is the first time that all known chains of transmission in the three Ebola-ravaged countries have been stopped.

It would be recalled that Liberia was first declared free of Ebola transmission in May 2015, but the virus was re-introduced twice since then, with the latest flare-up in November. The other two affected countries, Sierra Leone and Guinea, were declared Ebola-free a year ago. The WHO says it will continue to work with governments on preventing transmission and responding to outbreaks.

But it said the countries would still struggle to deal with any future large outbreak of Ebola, which is passed on through blood and bodily fluids and killed around 40 percent of those who contracted the virus. Two Dallas health care workers infected on the job underwent intensive treatment in facilities, including the National Institutes of Health, that were equipped with special isolation units and staffs highly trained in Ebola-infection precautions.

Liberia was officially credited with beating the epidemic for a second time in September before another small cluster of cases emerged.

The outbreak of Ebola which may have started as early as December 2013 was the most complex and deadliest outbreak of the disease which put the lives of 22 million people across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea at risk.

The three West African countries now have the world’s biggest pool of expertise in handling the Ebola virus and greater professionalism, confidence and resources for dealing with it, he said. At its height, Ebola swept through the capital cities of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, overwhelming hospitals with the number of new cases being diagnosed every week.

The WHO chief said they expect all survivors of the epidemic to clear Ebola from their bodies by the end of 2016.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, who was criticized for the organization’s sluggish response to the outbreak in 2014, said in Geneva on Thursday that eliminating the disease had been a major achievement. By the time it had constructed more than a dozen Ebola treatment centers in Liberia, for example, the disease was already fading away, and some of those centers sat empty. Although Brennan says they are “anticipating more”, the risk of triggering a new outbreak from these flare-ups is low.