A teenager has died of Ebola in a remote Liberian village, shattering hopes the nation defeated the disease when it was declared free of the virus in early May by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberian deputy minister for surveillance and disease control, said Tuesday that the virus had been positively identified in the 17-year-old boy's remains. "I can tell you that a ... corpse was confirmed Ebola positive after two separate testings," Nyenswah said.
The boy fell ill June 21 and died three days later in a village of Margibi County, an area that stretches from the coastline southeast of Monrovia into Liberia's central region in the northeast. It borders Bong County, which is adjacent to Guinea where Ebola infections have persisted.
Nyenswah, who headed Liberia's Ebola response during the outbreak, said health workers are tracking 27 people who had contact with the teenager to see if they develop the disease. More people are expected to be identified as potentially at risk, he added. Nyenswah said he is confident the virus' spread is under control.
Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesman, said Tuesday that "although this (Liberia Ebola death) is not the situation we were hoping for, this incident shows that the alert system is working, that there is the capacity to quickly identify, isolate, treat and track every contact and stop further spread of the disease. It is critical that the Liberian people remain vigilant."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said one of its rapid-response teams is assisting with the investigation of the boy's death.
Until being declared Ebola free in May, Liberia had suffered more than any other West African country in this latest and most deadly Ebola outbreak in history. More than 4,800 Liberians died after the first case surfaced in December 2013, and the rate of infectious reached a crescendo early last fall.
In neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leona, the combined total number of new infections has remained steady for several weeks at between 20 and 27, according to WHO.
Despite efforts to track all persons exposed to the disease, WHO workers say new Ebola cases continue to arise among victims who are not being tracked. This makes it more difficult to break the chain of transmission for the disease, which has a death rate of 50% or more.
Also troubling are two new cases of infections among health workers, a circumstance disease-control officials had hoped to prevent. Both cases occurred in Guinea, which had not reported a health care worker infection in two months, according to WHO. More than 500 health workers have died since the epidemic began.
At the peak of the outbreak, Liberia was reporting 300 to 400 new cases every week. Last fall, President Obama sent nearly 3,000 U.S. troops to Liberia to build treatment centers, train health care staff and conduct laboratory tests of body fluids to confirm diagnoses of the disease.
That deployment dwindled to a few dozen troops in recent months and officially ended Tuesday with all service members pulling out of the nation, according to Kimberley Jurado, a spokeswoman for U.S. Army Africa.
There was a national celebration of fasting, prayer, singing and dancing when Liberia was declared free of Ebola on May 9, a decision rendered after 42 days passed without a new infection, twice the 21-day incubation period for the deadly virus. Schools and sports facilities reopened, and and the Confederation of African Football cleared Liberia to host international games.
Nyenswah said the national health system's ability to "quickly detect the (new) case means our system is working and is able to deal with any situation. No need to panic at this moment."
The case was discovered after a burial team in Margibi County was alerted to the boy's mysterious death. The team collected bodily fluid, which later tested positive for Ebola, Nyenswah said. The village where the boy was from was placed under quarantine and food was among the worst impacted areas during the outbreak.
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