Last Reported Ebola Patient in Sierra Leone Released

The patient’s release on Monday now starts the clock for a 42-day countdown until the World Health Organization can declare the country Ebola-free.

But Vanessa Wolfman from the global Medical Corps said it had no immediate plans to close the British-funded facility, including a diagnostics lab.

“Everyone just wants this to be over”, said Bill Boyes, a spokesman for the Los Angeles-based group that cared for Ms Sankoh. Nearly 4,000 people have died of Ebola in that country since then.

Lab technician Mohamed SK Sesay was working at a hospital in Kenema, a town in eastern Sierra Leone, testing blood samples for Ebola when he fell sick with the virus. If another case does not emerge in the next 42 days the country will be officially declared Ebola-free.

The survivor board at the Aspen Medical headquarters in Canberra.

“‘Ebola nor don don” (Ebola is not yet finished), the President told Madame Sankou as he handed her a certificate confirming that she was now negative for Ebola virus. The country had suffered the greatest number of lives lost on account of the virus.

Sierra Leone said Saturday that gold exports had plunged by two-thirds and diamond exports almost halved in the first half of 2015.

Sankoh lost her 23-year-old son to the virus and contracted the illness quickly after.

She began exhibiting symptoms soon after and was admitted to the Makeni treatment facility in early August, as was a nephew, Alhaji Sankoh. “When Alhaji was released she was singing and dancing”. About eight members of his team got infected and he was among the few survivors, WHO said.

Healthworkers in masks and full protective clothing danced and cheered as they escorted Sankoh from the high risk zone of the ETC, through the chlorinated shower, and on to a red carpet.

Overall, the response provided “a stunning example of all that was missing, all that can go wrong”, she said, insisting “change is urgently needed”. She was then invited to add her hand print to a survivors’ wall and left the centre at the head of a procession of singing, clapping and drumming caregivers.

She appealed to “government not to forget all Ebola survivors as most of us are now very vulnerable in terms of economic wellbeing”. Hundreds of people – including Sierra Leone’s president, Ernest Bai Koroma – were waiting to celebrate. At the same time, it has ravaged local healthcare facilities, some of which became sources of infection for employees and patients. Fear of having to use up their limited funds is keeping people whose incomes have been hard hit by a year of Ebola away from health centers, even when it might well mean the loss of a much-loved child.

“I have been experiencing whole lot of problems within my body system”, he said.