WHO Declares Guinea Ebola-Free Country

Local Editor

The World Health Organization declared on Tuesday that Guinea's Ebola outbreak was over two years after it emerged, spreading death across West Africa and pushing the region's worst-hit communities to the brink of collapse.

Considered one of the poorest nations in the world, the former French colony hosted "patient zero," an infant who became the first victim. Later on, health authorities went on to record some 2,500 deaths.

Relatively, the UN's health agency said in a statement in Geneva: "Today the [WHO] declares the end of Ebola virus transmission in the Republic of Guinea."

Starting in December 2013, the fever spread stealthily and terrifyingly, striking two neighboring countries, Sierra Leone and Liberia, with sporadic cases also in Mali, Nigeria and Senegal.

As world health watchdogs struggled to respond, the death toll mounted at a dizzying rate, igniting fears in Europe and elsewhere of a virus that transgressed borders and national controls.

In all, around 11,300 people died out of almost 29,000 recorded cases, according to a WHO tally that many experts believe greatly understates the real impact of the outbreak.

The recent outbreak was the deadliest epidemic of Ebola since the disease was first identified in 1976.

The last known case in Guinea was a three-month-old named Nubia, who was born with the disease but whose recovery was confirmed on November 16.

That triggered the countdown to the announcement, as a period of 42 days, twice the virus's maximum incubation period, is required to declare a country free of transmission.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team