Liberia first declared itself free of the virus in May 2015 but
Ebola flared up again three times, most recently when a woman contracted
it after travelling to neighbouring Guinea and infecting her two
children, the WHO said.
Liberia has reached the end of active Ebola virus transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday, the fourth such declaration from one of the west African countries at the epicentre of the world's worst outbreak of the disease.
The declaration means it has been 42 days since the last confirmed patient tested negative for a second time for the disease.
Liberia
first declared itself free of the virus in May 2015 but Ebola flared up
again three times, most recently when a woman contracted it after
travelling to neighbouring Guinea and infecting her two children, the WHO said.
The WHO declared Sierra Leone free of the deadly haemorrhagic fever on March 17 and Guinea on June 1.
Tolbert
Nyenswah, head of Liberia's Ebola reponse team, told Reuters the
country had strengthened its surveillance and response capacity and its
laboratory system since the start of the outbreak.
"We've proven we can contain the outbreak, we can intervene very swiftly," said Nyenswah.
Liberia,
like Guinea before it, will now need to undergo an additional 90 days
of heightened surveillance as the disease can live on in survivors'
bodily fluids for months.
WHO data show West
Africa's Ebola epidemic killed more than 11,300 people and infected some
28,600 as it swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from 2013
in the world's worst outbreak of the disease.
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