After 11,300 deaths, Ebola outbreak is over: WHO

A corpse has tested positive for Ebola a day after the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak over in West Africa.

WHO emergency risk management head Rick Brennan said the organisation had “done a lot of soul-searching”.

A corpse has tested positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone, only a day after the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak over in West Africa.

Tests on a 22-year-old woman who died earlier this month in the country’s north proved positive for the virus, a spokesman for the Office of National Security said.

Authorities are tracing her contacts between her home in Northern Kambia district and Northern Tonkolili district where she sought medical help. They have dispatched teams, and certain areas will be quarantined.

WHO had earlier declared an end to the world’s worst Ebola outbreak, which claimed more than 11,300 lives and cost about $US2.2 billion ($3.2bn).

The fever, which caused the worst affected patients to bleed through their eyes while their bodies dissolved, spread to 10 countries and infected 28,636 people, partly because of a sluggish and inadequate international response when the first cases were reported in December 2013.

Scientists suspect that the first victim, known as Patient Zero, was two-year-old Emile Ouamouno, who died in the village of Meliandou in Guinea. He infected his three-year-old sister, Philomene, his pregnant mother, Sia, his grandmother and a midwife. WHO did not declare an outbreak until the following March, by which time the disease had spread to at least four nearby towns.

From there it went on to overwhelm the health systems in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which bore the brunt of the cases and suffered all but 15 of the deaths. At the outbreak’s peak, corpses littered their capital cities. At least 500 medical workers died and a further 400 were infected.

The last known cases were a father and son in Liberia, who were discharged from an isolation ward on December 3. WHO said they had both tested negative twice, but officials waited 42 days before declaring the outbreak officially over.

WHO emergency risk management head Rick Brennan acknowledged the organisation’s inertia but said it had “done a lot of soul-searching” that led to reform.

“We must all learn from this experience to improve how we respond to future epidemics” said Medecins Sans Frontieres head Joanne Liu.

WHO director Margaret Chan said the next three months were the most critical.

The Times, AP