Dead Sierra Leone patient tests positive for Ebola

It was not clear how many people the patient had been in contact with before the virus was detected.

A new case of Ebola has emerged hours after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the West African outbreak was over.

On declaring the end of the epidemic on Thursday – Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO Special Representative for the Ebola Response said: ‘The risk of re-introduction of infection is diminishing as the virus gradually clears from the survivor population, but we still anticipate more flare-ups and must be prepared for them.

But two tests conducted on a boy who died in northern Sierra Leone proved positive for the virus, a health ministry.

Nearly all the victims were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, but all three countries had been declared free of the virus: Sierra Leone on November 7, Guinea late a year ago, and Liberia on Thursday.

The tests reinforce concerns about flare-ups of the virus that has killed more than 11,300 people since 2013 in the world’s deadliest outbreak of Ebola. “Evidence shows that the virus disappears relatively quickly from survivors, but can remain in the semen of a small number of male survivors for as long as 1 year, and in rare instances, be transmitted to intimate partners”.

Health specialists cautioned against complacency, saying the world was still underprepared for any future outbreaks of the disease.

Liberia was the last country to see the end of active transmission of Ebola.

‘That’s because there is still ongoing risk of re-emergence of the disease because of persistence of the virus in a proportion of survivors’. The other affected countries, Guinea and Sierra Leone were declared Ebola-free late 2015.