Sierra Leone's Health Ministry said on Thursday it was investigating a suspected Ebola death in Tonkolili district, hours after the World Health Organization said transmission of the virus in West Africa had ended. “A suspected Ebola death has been reported in Tonkolili district today,” said a note sent by the ministry to health officials in the country and seen by Reuters.
By Umara Fofana FREETOWN (Reuters) – Residents of Sierra Leone's capital held a candlelit vigil and celebrations to mark the end of an Ebola epidemic that has killed almost 4,000 people including more than 220 health workers since it began last year. Following 42 days with no new cases, the West African nation's epidemic was declared over on Saturday at a ceremony attended by President Ernest Bai Koroma and U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) representative Anders Nordstrom. Thousands of people gathered overnight around the Cotton Tree, a massive tree in the centre of Freetown, for a candlelit vigil organised by women's groups to pay tribute to health workers who lost their lives.
Ghana has halted a plan to test two Ebola vaccines in an eastern town after legislators backed local protests against the trials sparked by fears of contamination, officials said on Wednesday. The country's Food and Drugs Authority said it had begun enlisting volunteers in Hohoe in the Volta region to be injected with drugs made by Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic as part of a global Ebola vaccine drive. Ebola has killed more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since it began more than a year ago but new cases have declined sharply.
On May 24 last year a pregnant woman and an older housewife staggered into Kenema hospital in eastern Sierra Leone and were diagnosed within a day as the country's first Ebola cases. Both women had attended the funeral of a widely-respected faith healer known as Mendinor, whose “powers” were renowned on both sides of Sierra Leone's border with Guinea. The grandmother, whose real name was Finda Nyuma, had been treating sick patients in her home village, a diamond-mining town just a few hours' walk from Gueckedou in Guinea, where the outbreak began in December 2013.
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone's 6 million people were told to stay home for three days beginning Friday, except for religious services, as the West African nation attempted a final push to rid itself of Ebola.
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Ten clinicians with a Boston-based nonprofit organization responding to Sierra Leone's Ebola outbreak are to be evacuated to the United States after one of their colleagues was infected with the deadly disease.
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Sierra Leone’s vice president has put himself in quarantine following the death from Ebola of one of his security guards.
LONDON (Reuters) – The condition of a British nurse being treated for Ebola in a London hospital is critical after deteriorating over the last two days, the hospital said in a statement on Saturday. The Royal Free Hospital has been treating Pauline Cafferkey with blood plasma from an Ebola survivor and an experimental anti-viral drug. She was diagnosed with the disease last week after returning to Britain late on Dec. 28 from Sierra Leone, where she had been working. Cafferkey is the first person to have been diagnosed with Ebola in Britain. …