DAKAR, Senegal — After a nerve-racking countdown,Sierra Leone celebrated a national milestone on Saturday that government officials
hoped would help the country finally leave behind a grim chapter in its
history: It was officially declared free of ebola transmissions.
The World Health Organization
made the announcement at an official ceremony in Freetown,
the capital,
after the nation had passed 42 days, or two incubation periods for the
virus, without an ebola case.
The news marks a joyous but tense moment in Sierra Leone,
where Ebola has crippled the nation’s economy and officials worry the
virus could re-emerge at any moment. Saturday’s ceremony was broadcast
on radio and television stations across the country and included an
emotional story from an Ebola response worker who survived being
infected with the virus.
“It’s
kind of like a mixed emotion,” said Tunis Yahya, director of
communications for the country’s National Ebola Response Center,
speaking by phone from the official ceremony, attended by President
Ernest Bai Koroma. “People are happy, but also many are depressed
because they lost their families.”
The
swirl of emotions was evident on the streets of Freetown, where people
started gathering at midnight in anticipation of the announcement,
dancing in celebration. But there was also quiet reflection. Names of
the dead were read aloud, and people gathered under a giant cotton tree
for a vigil for health workers who died.
In
Sierra Leone, the hardest hit of any nation during the Ebola outbreak,
nearly 4,000 people died from the disease; altogether 14,000 were
infected. The outbreak has so far killed more than 11,300 people across
the world.
Sierra
Leone will now begin a 90-day period of enhanced surveillance that will
run until Feb. 5, with the aim of quickly detecting any new possible
cases.
Liberia was declared free of the virus about two months ago. But the outbreak is still
in the country where it originated: Guinea, where domestic and
international health workers have flocked to a cluster of small villages
as seven new victims have emerged in recent weeks. Sierra Leone is on
high alert to prevent the outbreak from spreading over the border;
Guinea’s new cases are just 20 miles from the boundary separating the
countries.
But for Sierra Leone, Saturday was a time to relish the chance to get back to normal.
Celebrations
were planned across the nation, with speeches from political and
religious figures, singing, dancing, an ambulance exposition from the
Red Cross and balloon releases.
The
consequences of the outbreak in Sierra Leone, which began in May 2014,
have been far-reaching. As was the case in Liberia and Guinea, the
nation’s economy has been knocked off kilter after companies pulled out
and tourism and commerce ground to a halt when the virus started
spreading.
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