Liberia has lifted a state of emergency imposed for its “very survival” three months ago as the deadly Ebola virus was cutting a swathe through the west African nation.
The announcement – the clearest sign yet that the country believes it is beating an epidemic which has claimed nearly 3,000 Liberian lives – follows a dramatic recent drop in new cases.
“I have informed the leadership of the national legislature that I will not seek an extension of the state of emergency,” president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.
Ms Sirleaf announced the emergency regime on August 6, speaking of “a clear and present danger” from Ebola, which at the time had claimed about 1,000 lives across west Africa.
Parliament had been due to discuss extending the order, originally envisaged as a three-month measure, before Ms Sirleaf’s intervention.
Ms Sirleaf said the relaxation was “not because the fight against Ebola is over” but because recent successes in battling the epidemic had combined “to reposition our efforts to sustain our fight against the virus”.
She added that Liberia had acted “decisively” by imposing tough new regulations closing borders, imposing curfews and quarantines, shutting schools and restricting public gatherings.
“As the virus progressed, posing a clear danger to the state, our neighbours and the rest of the world, we were compelled to declare a state of emergency,” she said.
The decision effectively ends the state of emergency that officially expired earlier this month, though Ms Sirleaf said a night curfew remains in force.
The emergency had allowed authorities to restrict movement in areas hard hit by the virus.
Ebola has hit Liberia harder than Guinea or Sierra Leone, the two other countries at the centre of the worst outbreak of the disease on record.
The current outbreak has infected more than 14,000.
There are signs that the incidence of new Ebola cases is declining in Guinea and Liberia, though there are still steep increases in Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
On Wednesday, it said the total Ebola death toll in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had reached 5,147 out of 14,068 cases as of November 9, with 13 more deaths and 30 cases recorded in Nigeria, Senegal, Mali, Spain and the United States.
Mali increases border health checks
In Mali, which shares an 800 kilometre border with Guinea, a nurse died of Ebola on Tuesday, and on Thursday a doctor at the same clinic was also revealed to be infected.
More than 90 people had already been quarantined in the capital Bamako after the nurse’s death, just as a group exposed to Mali’s first case completed their required 21 days of isolation.
“The president of the republic has asked the prime minister to look urgently at the entire system put in place to fight Ebola and to strengthen health controls at the different frontier posts,” a government statement said.
But officials said there were no plans to close the border, even though the nurse had been infected by a man who arrived from Guinea.
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta urged the WHO and health services in Mali and neighbouring states to set up a permanent information exchange to improve awareness about public health and hygiene.
The 25-year-old nurse’s death in Mali, after treating a man from Guinea who was misdiagnosed with kidney failure, forced a lockdown in the clinic where she had worked.
There are also fears for the family of the misdiagnosed man, as he was given a traditional burial which involves washing and dressing the deceased body.
The Pasteur Clinic, one of Bamako’s leading medical facilities and the default health centre for expatriates, was being guarded by UN peacekeepers with armoured personnel carriers and by Malian security forces, witnesses said.
Mali’s first case of Ebola was a two-year-old girl who had been infected in Guinea and died last month.
Just as the people who had been in contact with her finished their 21 days of quarantine, Mali must now trace those who had contact with the nurse and the three others infected with her.
Global medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres said clinical trials of three potential Ebola treatments would begin in December at MSF medical centres in Guinea and Liberia.
AFP/Reuters