Sierra Leone Declared Ebola-free by WHO

Sierra Leone was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization on Saturday, a joyous milestone for a country that accounted for nearly half of all cases in the epidemic globally and is now struggling with a brutal economic recession.

Freetown, Sierra Leon

In a statement released Saturday morning, the WHO said that the virus was no longer being transmitted from person to person in the small West African country where it once stalked through homes and neighborhoods.

“The Ebola outbreak has decimated families, the health system, the economy and social structures,” the organization said. “All need to recover.”

The Ebola-free stamp means that Sierra Leone has gone 42 days without an infection. The virus circulated for a year and a half,  sweeping from east to west and killing nearly 4,000 people in the nation of six million people.

Sierra Leone bet heavily three years ago that Chinese demand for iron would funnel billions of dollars into the government’s treasury. A raft of new mines made Sierra Leone sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest-growing economy in 2012, and its second-fastest in 2013. Many of those pits closed during the epidemic, and opened just as China’s economy was floundering.

The result: Sierra Leone’s government doesn’t have the money it needs to rebuild. Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea have said they will need a total of $8 billion to restore their countries to the growth they had experienced before Ebola, a period that helped lift all three countries out of civil war or dictatorship.
At the same time, thousands of the country’s citizens have never been in greater need. Sierra Leone has more than 10,000 Ebola survivors, many of whom lost jobs, were cast out by their families or communities, or are suffering from depression and other psychosocial trauma after their life-threatening ordeals. Many others are suffering debilitating physical after effects of their disease, from loss of vision to persistent joint pain.

President and Sister Clawson, the Sierra Leone Mission President Couple from Rochester, New York are in Africa and are awaiting clearance to travel to Sierra Leone and launch the missionary effort full-swing.(Source: Wall Street Journal - http://www.wsj.com/articles/sierra-leone-declared-free-of-ebola-by-who-1446895391)