The corpse of a 17-year-old boy has tested positive for Ebola
in Liberia, the country’s deputy Health Minister said late Monday. He added
that no other case had been reported.
Tolbert Nyenswah, who is also head
of the country’s Ebola response, told newsmen that the teenager died June 24 in
Nedowein, a town situated close to the country’s international airport, about
48 kilometres south of the capital, and was given a safe burial the next day.
Liberia had been the country hardest
hit by last year’s Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The World Health
Organisation, WHO, declared Liberia Ebola-free on May 9 after the country went
42 days without reporting a case.
Nyenswah said: “We have said over
and over again that there was the possibility of a resurgence of the virus in
Liberia. But our capacity is very strong.”
The deadly virus, which has killed
over 11,100 people mostly in West Africa in its worst outbreak ever, is hanging
on stubbornly in Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak was first reported in March
2014, and in Sierra Leone.
It was not known how the 17-year-old
contracted Ebola. The town where the teenager died is far from the borders with
Sierra Leone and Guinea, so Nyenswah said they were investigating whether his
case might be linked to travel.
Specimens were taken from the corpse
before burial, and the tests later came back positive.
“The only complication is that the
person died before we tested the body as part of our surveillance system of
testing living and dead people,” Nyenswah said.
Nyenswah said teams are already
doing contact tracing in the Nedowein area.
“There is no need for pandemonium;
people should go about their normal business,” he said.
He called the Ebola testing of the
young man’s corpse “a success story for our surveillance system.”
United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-Moon had warned earlier this month that as long as there is one Ebola case
in West Africa “all countries are at risk.”
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