Sierra Leone reports Ebola death hours after World Health Organization declares end to virus

Liberia is marked as Ebola-free effectively by the World Health Organisation (WHO), joining Sierra Leone and Guinea, ending the world’s worst outbreak of the disease.

The World Health Organization has declared the most recent flare-up of Ebola in Liberia over and the Country free of Ebola virus transmission in the human population.

Making remarks Thursday at the Ebola Operation Center (EOC) in Congo Town the World Health Organization Country Representative commended the Liberian Government, People, communities, health workers and partners on the successful response to the latest outbreak of Ebola.

The WHO added that it is working with country governments to ensure that survivors have access to medical and psychosocial care, as well as screening for persistent virus. Sierra Leone was declared free of Ebola transmission on 7 November 2015 and Guinea on 29 December.

On Wednesday, a report from a group of worldwide health experts convened in the wake of the crisis warned that infectious diseases represent a threat matched only by wars and natural disasters when it comes to endangering life and disrupting societies.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Thursday his country had developed a vaccine for the Ebola virus.

As NPR’s Goats and Soda blog reported in November, when the most recent flare-up in Liberia began, researchers are continuing to learn about how survivors can and can’t pass the disease to others long after the standard incubation cycle is over.

The virus, which can kill within five days of infection, devastated the region’s economies and ripped through communities, killing more than 11,000 people and infecting more than 28,500.

WHO officials said that the health authorities in the affected countries had put in surveillance and rapid response mechanisms for managing the risk, and that those measures had proved effective in containing the flare-ups.

With Thursdays official announcement that the Ebolas transmission had ended, global health officials acknowledged the achievement – and the unprecedented challenged posed by the disease.“Detecting and breaking every chain of transmission has been a monumental achievement, ” said Margaret Chan, WHOs director general. The country now enters a three month period of heightened surveillance.

Read the IRC statement, which explains what needs to be done to prevent another outbreak and outlines the challenges yet ahead. There have been 10 such flare-ups at the end of the outbreak, due largely to the persistence of the virus in survivors.

FILE- This is a Friday, Oct. 31, 2014 file photo of hearth workers as they carry the body of an old man from his house as he is suspected of dying from the Ebola virus in the Siah Town area on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia.