Mali declares their Ebola outbreak over. Yahoo/AFP

A man washes his hands in Mali. Yahoo/AFP

Mali has declared their Ebola outbreak over after 42 days without a new case. Yahoo/AFP. No new cases have been detected in the country after the last infected patient tested negative on December 6th. 42 days is twice the diseases incubation period. Seven people died in the outbreak in two waves. The first wave was a single case of a small girl who died from the disease. The second wave was from a Muslim cleric who infected seven other people. Five died along with the cleric. 

My Comment:

By my count that is five countries that have contained Ebola after getting initial cases. Senegal and Spain had a single case while Nigeria, the United States and Mali had multiple cases. The United Kingdom has had an initial case but all indications are that that should be the only case. All of that is great news. If nothing else it proves that the disease can be beaten back if countries take strong measures to stop the spread of the disease. Contact tracing does work when there aren't many case. 

Of course any of the countries could have a second outbreak of the disease, including the United States. Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guiana are still seeing new cases. Just looking at the raw numbers tells me that the spread of the disease is fairly constant. The good news is that the rate isn't really increasing. Liberia seems to be slowing down considerably while new infections in Sierra Leone and Guiana look fairly stable. 

So what does that mean? The threat is still real. As long as new infections are happening, it's possible that the disease will continue and spread to other countries. The international community seems fairly prepared at this point to react to that, but it is still possible that the disease could get to a country that has a very dysfunctional health care system or is ravaged by war. And until I see the rate of infections level off, I am not comfortable claiming that this outbreak is anywhere near over.