Liberia 10 days free of Ebola

Health Ministry

The Deputy Incident Manager for Operations of the National Ebola Task Force, Mr. Thomas Nagbe has disclosed that Liberia has gone 10 days free without any Ebola confirmed case.

Speaking at the Information Ministry on Monday, Nagbe said the country has gone 10 days out of the 32 more days for the World Health organization or WHO to declare Liberia Ebola-free.

He indicated that the IMC was doing a cross-border initiative to make sure that neighboring Mano River Union countries are Ebola-free because if they were still experiencing new cases, Liberia will be in danger because of the common borders they share.

According to him, the first active case of Ebola came from a Liberian woman in Lofa County in the northwest, married to a Sierra Leonean. She felt sick, came home and died, but her body was taken back to Sierra Leone.

According to the Deputy Incident Manager, all of the nine men who transported the body back to Sierra Leone contracted the virus and died.

Mr. Nagbe said training kits and hand-washing centers have been placed at every border point in Liberia. He also said kits have been distributed among healthcare workers and community leaders.
He noted that the Incident Management system put into place three phases to eradicate Ebola from Liberia- the first being to reduce the large Ebola cases from 100 to at least 10 cases per day.

After successfully ending the first phase, according to him, the second phase was to have a safe burial and more ETUs in the country, while the third phase is the stage at which the country is presently reaching to zero and remaining at zero.

By Ethel A. Tweh