The United States on Thursday closed down a clinic it ran in the capital, Monrovia. This is definitely a sign that Liberia is getting closer to being free of the Ebola virus.
At a ceremony attended by Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Stars and Stripes flag was lowered at the tented unit where teams of medics treated Ebola victims during the outbreak which killed more than 10,000 people across West Africa.
The United States withdrew nearly all its troops fighting the virus in February, after a sharp decline in the numbers of victims.
Liberia’s last known case died on March 27 and the country is conducting the 42-day countdown to be officially declared free of the disease.
This is twice the maximum incubation period for Ebola, as specified by the World Health Organization.
Since the start of the deadly outbreak the U.S. helped build 15 Ebola treatment units, trained more than 1,500 health workers and coaxed the world community into contributing more than $2 billion to Ebola efforts.
The World Health Organization said a total of 37 confirmed cases had been reported in week to April 12, up from 30 the previous week. Of those, 28 were recorded in Guinea, nine in Sierra Leone and none in Liberia.
The United States Agency for International Development recently announced plans to spend $126 million to help rebuild West African health care systems affected by the Ebola outbreak.
