Liberia is free of ebola: WHO

The World Health Organization declared Liberia free of Ebola on Saturday, making it the first of the three hardest-hit West African countries to bring a formal end to the epidemic.

"The outbreak of Ebola virus disease in Liberia is over," the WHO said in a statement read by Alex Ntale Gasasira, the WHO's representative to Liberia, in a packed conference room at the emergency command center in Monrovia, the capital.

The room, packed with reporters and dignitaries including the US ambassador to Liberia, Deborah R Malac, burst into applause, according to a health official who was present.

The president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, then held a moment of silence for those who had died. She thanked Liberians who had fought Ebola and the country's international partners and others around the world.

According to the WHO, there were more than 3,000 confirmed Ebola cases in Liberia, and a further 7,400 suspected or probable cases, with more than 4,700 deaths estimated to have occurred since the outbreak was declared there in March of 2014. Among the dead were 189 health care workers.

"I'm particularly struck by the significant progress we have made as a country and as a people," Tolbert Nyenswah, a senior Liberian health official who heads the country's Ebola response efforts, said Thursday in an interview. The only caution is that our subregion is not free yet, and we are very much concerned about Guinea and Sierra Leone."

Last week those countries, which share borders with Liberia, each reported nine cases, the lowest weekly total this year. Nyenswah said Liberia would continue many of the control measures that helped the country vanquish the epidemic, including surveying border areas for sick travelers, testing all dead bodies for the virus and conducting burials with specially trained teams wearing full protective gear.

"We are being extremely cautious," Bernice Dahn, the country's health minister, said in an email. She added that the country's priority now is to build its critically deficient health care workforce to provide Liberians with a higher standard of care and help guard against future outbreaks.

A key question for Liberians is if the end of the outbreak will draw foreign companies back to the country, whose economy has been battered. For instance, British Airways and several other airlines which stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone last August, have not resumed services.

Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped advising US residents to avoid non-essential travel to Liberia, instead recommending that they "practice enhanced precautions" when going there. "The country can get back to business," Thomas R. Frieden, director of the CDC, said Friday in an interview.

The WHO has recommended that Liberia maintain an additional three months of "heightened surveillance" for Ebola due to the ongoing outbreak in its neighbouring countries, as well as the possibility that Ebola could re-emerge via sexual transmission from survivors.