Experts say Ebola survivors are facing chronic medical conditions

About 50 percent of survivors experience joint pain, and 25 percent have reported eye problems like inflammation, impaired vision, and even blindness.

But treating Ebola-related eye problems isn’t easy.

On rare occasions where a pregnant woman survives and goes into labour, the virus seems to persist in the fetus and placenta, Bausch said.

They were not able to say whether survivors’ chronic health problems were unusual as the West Africa’s devastating Ebola epidemic was by far the largest ever seen.

For his part, Wang Yi lauded President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and the people of Liberia for their resilience in the fight against the Ebola virus; noting that though Liberia was the hardest hit of the three sub-regional countries, it was the first to be declared Ebola free by the World Health Organization (WHO).

While data remains preliminary, he said, it appears that survivors whose acute disease was severe also tend to have the most severe after-effects. Prior to last year’s outbreak, the two largest Ebola outbreaks happened in Uganda in 2000 and 2001, with 425 cases.

Anders Nordstrom spoke on Friday on a news brief via phone conference on Ebola survivors.

He spoke about the different units that would be working together in making sure the these categories of persons are met. Spearheaded by the WHO, with the support of aid agencies like MSF and an army of thousands of local clinicians, officials and volunteers, people on contact lists are followed up twice a day for 21 days – the virus’s incubation period.

Doctors know that pregnant patients are at a high risk of death & only a few actually give birth to live children. Bausch said to his knowledge, cataract surgery hasn’t been attempted among Ebola survivors. Most babies were miscarried or stillborn.

Today’s announcement will give much needed respite to the majority of Sierra Leoneans that have strictly observed the Ebola regulations to the letter, including the ban on social gathering and restricted market trading.

“I was seeing awful things”, Kabba said.

Amadu Lamrana Bah reporting from Freetown last week said plans by the APC led government to discuss extending the State of Emergency beyond the 1 year period were halted by a threatened boycott by the opposition SLPP who refused to sit in on such deliberations.

According to the specialists, the outcome of the EVD outbreak in West Africa is not surprising as Ebola virus is risky and EVD could have long term impacts. There were two confirmed cases of Ebola in the week ending August 2, with one each in Sierra Leone and Guinea. It was the lowest weekly total reported since March 2014, and marks a third consecutive decline in weekly cases.