Three weeks after Beatrice Yordoldo, the last known victim of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in Liberia, was discharged from a hospital, the country has recorded a new case.
Francis Kateh, acting head of the Ebola incident management team in Liberia, told the BBC that a woman who was taken into a treatment centre in Monrovia, capital of the country, tested positive for the virus on Friday.
Kateh said he was concerned that it had not been possible to establish how the woman became infected, as health workers had run out of “contacts” to pursue, revealing that an investigation would be conducted to find out if she actually travelled abroad.
The World Heath Organisation (WHO), which certifies a country free of the virus 42 days after the last victim had been discharged from the hospital, warned earlier that there could be fresh outbreaks in Liberia.
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“We look at the three countries [Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia} as really a single country, so while it’s good news that Liberia itself has no new cases, the populations are so mobile in that region that there could easily be re-importations of cases,” said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl.
“We have to get down to zero in all three countries before we can consider this thing beaten.”
Statistics released by WHO showed that almost 24,000 people have been infected with the virus since December 2013, and 9,807 of them have died.
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