Ebola returns to Liberia; WHO says ‘flare-ups … are expected’

“The Ministry of Health is encouraging the citizens not to panic in the wake of the new Ebola case”, it said.

In neighbouring Guinea, several cases have been identified in recent weeks.

This latest case in Liberia marks the third flare-up of Ebola virus disease since its original outbreak was declared over in May.

Liberia had been cleared of the virus on January 14 after a mid-November flareup, and neighboring Guinea is investigating a cluster of new cases in one of its southern regions.

The announcement comes a few days after WHO said the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was no longer a public health emergency of global concern.

Liberia was declared free of Ebola in May 2015, only to have the deadly disease rear its head again in subsequent months. A team of public health, medical, pharmaceutical and humanitarian experts are urging members of the worldwide health community to push toward the completion of an Ebola vaccine rather than shifting their attention to more other pressing public health issues.

Liberian Ministry of Health Ebola Incident Manager Tolbert Nyensuah told Anadolu Agency that the victim, a woman in her 30s, died upon arrival at the capital’s Redemption Hospital.

More than 11,000 have died of the Ebola virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in the last two years. Six of the deceased are from three generations of the same extended family in the village of Koropara, it said. Traditional funerals, in which mourners touch the body, were a major source of virus transmission during the epidemic in West Africa.

Ebola causes severe fever and muscle pain, weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea.

Guinea announced new cases on March 17 just hours after Sierra Leone declared an end of active transmission, a fact that briefly meant that West Africa was officially free of Ebola.