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Congo free of Ebola, but deaths rise in W Africa
November 23, 2014, 5:01 pm

An Ebola awareness campaign poster warns passengers at Lungi Airport in Sierra Leone of the ways the virus is transmitted [Xinhua]

An Ebola awareness campaign poster warns passengers at Lungi Airport in Sierra Leone of the ways the virus is transmitted [Xinhua]

The World Health Organization has declared the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) “Ebola-free” after more than a month passed with no new cases reported.

Health officials in DRC had reported 49 people by the Ebola virus in September.

The WHO also said that the deadly disease in Guinea appeared to be under control and that the situation there was stabilizing.

The announcements marks a small victory in a continuing struggle to minimize the virus’s fatality rate and curb its spread, particularly in West Africa.

But the rate of transmission is still overwhelming, WHO said on Friday.

It said that the death rate had reached 5,500 people of more than 15,300 infected cases mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

There were concerns that Mali would be the next center of outbreak as six patients treated for Ebola died in the last few weeks. A seventh patient is in critical condition, health officials there told the media.

In the meantime, healthcare volunteers treating Ebola victims are continuing to succumb to the debilitating disease.

Meanwhile a surgeon who served in Sierra Leone remains in critical condition in a Nebraska hospital in the US.

A Cuban doctor infected with the Ebola virus arrived in Switzerland from West Africa for treatment at the request of WHO on Friday.

The international medical body also listed 320 Ebola-related deaths among healthcare workers out of a total 564 infected.

What is Ebola?

Global experts including WHO say that while they have made gains in urban areas in West Africa, hard-to-reach remote rural areas remain a danger. They have been unable to determine with certainty the levels of infection and death in these remote areas.

Source: Agencies