We previously posted that Liberia was planning to declare their country free from Ebola well they have now declared it. On Saturday May 9th Marked 42days since Liberia's last Ebola. The benchmark used to declare the outbreak over because it represents two incubation periods of 21 days for new cases to emerge. The World Health Organization on Saturday called the milestone a "monumental achievement for a country that reported the highest number of deaths in the largest, longest, and most complex outbreak since Ebola first emerged in 1976."
While praising the international community's help in getting Liberia to zero cases, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Saturday criticized the slow initial response to the epidemic in West Africa that cost many lives fox news.
"This Ebola outbreak is a scar on the conscience of the world. For some the pain and grief will take a generation to heal," she said. "Therefore, let today's announcement be a call to arms that we will build a better world for those Ebola could not reach ... It is the least the memories of our dearly departed deserve."
"It's important to remember the next case is only a canoe ride away across the river or across a forest path, so we still have an element of risk here and we all need to be very conscious of that," said Sheldon Yett, UNICEF's Representative in Liberia, who emphasized that the recovery needs also remain enormous.
"Communities here did the right thing: They isolated people who were sick, they reported people who were sick. Every street corner had stations for washing hands, and this made a difference," Yett said.
Many of the treatment centers built with help from the United States finished construction after the height of the epidemic -- some of the tarp and wood constructed facilities will be repurposed but many will be taken down.
Communities scarred by the looming threat of death can't imagine visiting them even months later, even if the clinics never treated a single Ebola case, experts say.
"Even today (when) we hear an ambulance siren, we have to shake a little bit, seeing if this normal or are we facing something again," Liberia's president said recently at an event marking the end of an American-built Ebola treatment center for exposed health workers.
There are also concerns about the long-term effects on survivors, including questions about how long the virus remains present in the body. On Friday, WHO updated advice and testing guidelines for male survivors of Ebola because of the "strong possibility" that the virus could be spread through sex months later.
And medical study this week found Ebola inside the eye of a patient months after the virus was gone from his blood. Tears and tissue around the outside of the eye, though, did not. That suggests it poses little public health risk, experts said.
It's been nearly a year since Korlia Bonarwolo helped care for a co-worker at Redemption Hospital who later died from Ebola. The physician's assistant had no protective suit and no special gloves.
The 26-year-old ultimately got treatment in the country's first Ebola treatment center and now leads a network of more than 800 survivors across Liberia. He too was marking Saturday cautiously.
"We should instead be happy in our hearts," said Bonarwolo, "and pray for the other countries to be freed.'
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