{"id":2254,"date":"2015-05-10T22:03:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-10T22:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=2254"},"modified":"2015-05-10T22:03:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-10T22:03:08","slug":"who-declares-liberia-free-of-ebola-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/who-declares-liberia-free-of-ebola-virus\/","title":{"rendered":"WHO declares Liberia free of Ebola virus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Liberia free of the Ebola virus, confirming that the country has had no new cases in 42 days.<\/p>\n

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said\u00a0that Liberia had “crossed the Rubicon” and would be celebrating a concerted effort to stem the disease.<\/p>\n

More than 4,700 deaths from Ebola have been recorded in Liberia, more than in any other affected country.<\/p>\n

Neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone continue to fight the outbreak.<\/p>\n

It has claimed over 11,000 lives across the region since last year.<\/p>\n

The WHO regards a country Ebola-free after a 42-day period without a new case – twice the maximum incubation period.<\/p>\n

The last confirmed death in Liberia was on 27 March. On Saturday the World Health Organization said in a statement<\/a>: “The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia is over.”<\/p>\n

President Sirleaf said,\u00a0“We will celebrate our communities which have taken responsibility and participated in fighting this unknown enemy and finally we’ve crossed the Rubicon. Liberia indeed is a happy nation.”<\/p>\n

Officials say Ebola was eventually conquered in Liberia through a collective effort. Care centres and hand-washing stations were set up to try to halt the disease, which spreads through contact with sick people.<\/p>\n

Billboards went up with slogans such as “Ebola is real”, “Wash your hands and don’t touch” and “Don’t be the next victim”.<\/p>\n

Although Liberia has now been declared Ebola-free, correspondents say the outbreak will have a long-term impact on Liberia’s fragile economy.<\/p>\n

The current outbreak is the deadliest in history. It initially centred on Guinea’s remote south-eastern region of Nzerekore in early 2014, and later spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone.<\/p>\n

The WHO is warning against complacency. Its statement warns that there is “a high risk that infected people may cross into Liberia over the region’s exceptionally porous borders”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared Liberia free of the Ebola virus, confirming that the country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,1],"tags":[355,36,41,39,187],"class_list":["post-2254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","category-news","tag-africa","tag-ebola","tag-liberia","tag-virus","tag-who"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Liberia-Ebola.jpg?fit=637%2C320&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-Am","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions\/2256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}