New Cases of Ebola Put an End to Liberia?s Status as Virus-Free
By CLAIR MacDOUGALLJUNE 30, 2015
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It occurred in a small town just outside Monrovia. The family of Abraham Memaigar, 17, who died over the weekend, called a burial team that took swabs of the body and sent them to a laboratory. It confirmed that the boy had been infected by the virus.
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Late Tuesday, a person connected to Abraham tested positive for Ebola, and tests of two other people were inconclusive, Dr. Massaquoi said.
Thirty-three people who had contact with the teenager were isolated in their homes and were being monitored, he said. Three people will be sent to a treatment unit here Wednesday, he said.
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Abraham, who sold used clothes at a local market, fell ill at his mother?s house a week before his death, experiencing fever, diarrhea and vomiting.
Abraham?s father, James S. Memaigar, 49, a shoe salesman, said a local clinic had told him just three days before his son?s death that Abraham had malaria. The clinic had sent him home with a handful of tablets, Mr. Memaigar said.
Abraham died Sunday in his father?s home in a community known as Smell No Taste, a few miles from his mother?s home and a short distance from Liberia?s international airport and the Firestone rubber plantation.
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Liberia reports new Ebola infections - Cumulative cases 6 including 2 deaths
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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape 4m4 minutes ago
Liberian #Ebola case was apparently missed because he was co-infected with malaria. cc @HelenBranswell @FluTrackers http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2015/06/liberias-puzzle-how-did-new-ebola-patient-become-infected
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1 dead after Ebola reappears in Liberia
By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent
Updated 11:26 AM ET, Tue June 30, 2015
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Now authorities are trying to determine how many people the 17-year-old boy in Nidonwin had contact with during the week he was sick and potentially infectious with Ebola. His mother, father and siblings are already under quarantine in their home, said Tolbert Nyenswah, who heads up Liberia's Ebola response.
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The young man, who lived near the Liberian airport, started showing signs of Ebola on June 21, Nyenswah said. At some point between June 21 and his death on June 28, he went to a clinic and was diagnosed with malaria.
The clinic was likely not immediately suspicious of Ebola because the disease has not been circulating in the country for more than seven weeks, and the symptoms of Ebola can be very similar to other diseases, said Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization.
The teenager's parents called the national Ebola hotline the day their son died, and a "safe burial team," whose members wear full protective gear and are trained to handle bodies infected with Ebola, buried him that day, Nyenswah said.
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http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/30/health...-case-liberia/
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Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape 52s52 seconds ago
@flutrackers @helenbranswell @who Just got off the phone with WHO and they would only confirm the case and that a team is investigating.
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hat tip Helen Branswell
The body of a dead Liberian man has tested positive for Ebola - the country's first reported case since it was declared free of the disease.
June 29, 2015 Deputy health minister Tolbert Nyenswah said tests confirmed that the 17-year-old man, from a town near the main airport, had died of the disease.
Officials are investigating how he contracted Ebola, Mr Nyenswah said.
Liberia was declared free of Ebola six weeks ago, following the deadliest outbreak in the disease's history.
More than 11,000 people have died of the disease since December 2013, the vast majority of them in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The countries had largely curbed the spread of the disease - but the number of new cases has risen recently, with the start of the rainy season in West Africa.
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EBOLA BACK IN LIBERIA: 1 MONTH, 20 DAYS AFTER 'FREE' DECLARATION
Published: 29 June 2015
Monrovia - Liberia is reporting a new case of the deadly Ebola virus just one month and 20 days after the World Health Organization declared the country free of the virus transmission. Mr. Tolbert Nyenswah, Deputy Minister - designate for Disease, Surveillance and Epidemic Control confirmed to FrontPageAfrica Monday evening that the case was discovered after the death of the victim.
Mr. Nyenswah who heads Liberia Incidence Management Team during the Ebola outbreak confirmed that the reported case of the deadly Ebola virus was only detected from specimen taken from the corpse of a dead body. Nyenswah confirmed that specimen from a 17-year old corpse from the village of Nedowian in Margibi County taken before burial tested positive twice and the county surveillance team has increased work in the affected area.
?Specimen from the remains of a 17 year old corpse tested positive on two occasions after our burial team moved into the village and safely took the specimen before safe burial of the corpse?, said Nyenswah.
System working
Mr. Nyenswah was optimistic that the case may be isolated. ?We did the test twice and it all came positive but there is no need to panic quickly detecting means our system is working?. Critics have been piling pressure on the government lately over the reopening of the border between Liberia?s next door neighbors Sierra Leone and Guinea, still recording deaths from the deadly virus. But Mr. Nyenswah ruled out any possibility of transfer of the virus from those two countries.
How the latest case surfaced remains a mystery as Liberia has not reported any new case of the virus for nearly two months while the two countries are still reporting increase in cases. Nyenswah disclosed that from preliminary investigation the deceased felt ill on June 21 and died on the 24 at home in the remote village.
"We have listed 27 contacts and more to come. It is under control, we buried the corpse safely and our team will beef up work in the surrounding areas?, Mr. Nyenswah said. According to him, food, medicines and other items will be airlifted to the affected village to keep the residents under quarantine. Meanwhile, FPA has also gathered that a suspected case from C.H. Rennie in Kakata, Margibi County has been transferred to Gbarnga, Bong County. A test is expected to be performed on that case and the result will likely be known on Tuesday.
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Tue Jun 30, 2015 1:30pm IST
Liberia announces fresh Ebola death
A Liberian has died of Ebola in the first recorded case since the country at the heart of an epidemic was declared free of the virus on May 9, Deputy Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah said on Tuesday.
"A 17-year-old corpse was tested positive for Ebola virus. This took place in Margibi County. There is no need to panic. The corpse has been buried and our contact tracing has started work," said Nyenswah.
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It's tough to imagine how this occurred. It could certainly be an imported case from either Sierra Leone or Guinea, but I think we'd know that by now (and they would be glad to report that if it were true). Could the man have had animal contact? That seems incredibly unlikely, given that we know of no one (EVER) that contracted Ebola from an animal in Liberia; the previous outbreak having been started by imported human cases.
Could he have had contact with the semen of a recovered Ebola patient? Given his age and gender, that too seems unlikely. Could there have been a previously undiscovered chain of cases linking him to the earlier outbreak? The problem there is that not counting the last case in Liberia (which was infected by her recovered partner), it has been about four months since the last active case.
Could he have been infected and recovered from Ebola earlier, and now simply died of something else, and the previous infection might be causing incorrect test results?
It will be interesting to see what the investigation turns up.
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Liberia reports new Ebola infections - Cumulative cases 6 including 2 deaths
Ebola Resurfaces
Tue, 06/30/2015 - 01:51 admin
By:
Alaskai Moore Johnson, Observer Health Correspondent
Assistant Health Minister for Preventive Services and head of the Incident Management System (IMS), Mr. Tolbert G. Nyenswah, last night told the Daily Observer that there is a ?very likely confirmed case? of the deadly Ebola virus disease in Liberia.
He told our Health Correspondent that a 17-year-old male, who passed away on Saturday, June 27 and was safely buried by the Ebola burial team, had presented symptoms of the virus.
He stated that two tests conducted so far had proven the existence of the virus but that a third test was waiting to be done in order to corroborate and validate the results of the first two tests.
Asked about any history of the 17 year-old, he stated: ?This report is preliminary. We have just begun to act two hours ago. We are investigating what may have happened after so long since the country was declared free of Ebola transmission.?
He assured the public that there was no cause to worry as the nation?s response team has been swift to react to the news.
?Right now as I speak to you, a team of Epidemiologists from the Ministry of Health (MOH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) are now on the ground in Nedowein Town asking questions.?
[snip]
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