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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Deadly Ebola Virus Returns To Sierra Leone

ebola

According to reports the deadly Ebola virus is back in Freetown, Sierra Leone and this was announced by health authorities on Tuesday dashing hopes of about 1.2 million people residing in densely-populated Freetown.

From Time:

Two new cases of the deadly Ebola virus have been recorded in Sierra Leone’s capital city of Freetown, about three weeks after the most recent new cases were found, underscoring the difficulty of ridding the region of the disease.

“This is worrisome because we had already closed all Ebola quarantine structures in Freetown since we had gone for weeks without a case,” Sidi Yahya Tunis, a spokesman for the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC) told Reuters. The cases were found in a densely populated slum called Magazine.

Sierra Leone, one of the three West African nations hit hardest during the outbreak, has so far experienced more than 13,000 cases and more than 3,900 deaths. Guinea is still struggling to hit zero cases; Liberia, which at one point last year led all three in the highest number of cases, was declared Ebola-free in May.

Altogether, the three countries have reported more 27,350 cases and more than 11,170 deaths. Overall infections are on the decline, with fewer than 25 cases in Ebola treatment units last week.

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