Sierra Leone is finally declared Ebola free. AFP.

Graves in Sierra Leone containing the victims of the Ebola outbreak. AFP.

Celebrations hit the streets of Sierra Leone as the World Health Organization declared the nation of Sierra Leone officially Ebola free. AFP. Hundreds celebrated in the first party allowed since the start of the 18 month long outbreak. The outbreak killed almost 4,000 people in Sierra Leone alone and at least 11,000 deaths worldwide. The disease has now been wiped out in every country in the region except Guinea, though the outbreak there is considered under control. As the epidemic ended the focus now turns to rebuilding what was lost and regaining the progress in Sierra Leone after the countries 11 year long civil war ended in 2002. The country is thought to have lost $1.2 billion due to the outbreak and has suffered a 20% contraction of their GDP.

My Comment:

Very good news out of Sierra Leone. Last year it looked like this day would never come but Sierra Leone is finally Ebola free. It's so rare that I get to report good news on this blog and for once I have some. Though the outbreak is a tragedy, this is a victory for Sierra Leone and, indeed, the world. I am betting that the celebrations that happened yesterday in Sierra Leone will live on as one of the best parties anyone there has ever attended. After all that happened, they deserve it.  

Still, Ebola is not completely gone from West Africa. It still continues in Guinea, though it is largely under control. That isn't too surprising though. Ebola always had more of a slow burn in Guinea compared to Sierra Leone and Liberia. Back in the bad old days, when the outbreak was at it's peak, I would have bet money on Guinea being the first one to control Ebola, since the conditions in the other two countries were so terrible. But Liberia and Sierra Leone managed to be Ebola free first. Hopefully Guinea can start their 42 day countdown soon. At this point, I expect them to defeat the virus in a few months, and the outbreak will finally be over.

Ebola is still a threat though. Even though there are no cases "in the wild" in Sierra Leone, people still carry the virus. Ebola lives on in people's bodily fluids. There is a small chance that a survivor could infect someone else, most likely through sexual contact. The chances of that are small, but not non-existent. There is also a small chance that a survivor could end up showing symptoms again, like the British nurse that made the news lately. In that case, the survivor got Meningitis from the virus, so there was little chance of anyone else getting sick, but the threat still exists. Either way could cause the outbreak to flare up again. However, I am guessing that the final victory against the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak will happen sooner, rather then later.   

The fact of the matter is that we got very lucky that it wasn't worse then it was. Considering the virus completely devastated three countries and threatened the lives of people in seven more, including the United States, it's a minor miracle that more people didn't die. We are also extremely lucky that the virus did not reach any large countries with poor hygiene and health care, like India. Had that happened Ebola would still be in the news and many more people would have died. We were also lucky that the virus was never able to get a foothold into any of the other African nations that were effected, like Nigeria and Senegal. The cases in Western countries, were never a huge threat, though even there we had some secondary cases.  

I was also disturbed at how deeply politicized the outbreak became in the United States. On the issue of border controls, the left and right in America clashed and clashed hard. The left was unwilling to take even the most basic safety measures to prevent the virus from reaching America. And the right wanted nothing less then a total travel ban to and from the effected countries. What's mind boggling to me is that an easy compromise would have prevented America's Ebola outbreak completely. All we had to do was ban casual travel to the region. We could have let anyone who needs to get there to treat the virus go and prevent anyone from coming back that doesn't have an extremely important reason to do so, such as returning from fighting the disease. But no compromise was ever made and several people got very sick because of it. We are extremely lucky that only one person died, but I think nobody should have ever been infected in America. And our political bickering is the reason it happened. 

There are so many more lessons to learn from this outbreak but I think people have already largely forgotten about the Ebola virus. News moves quickly these days and there are more important things going on right now. But what happens the next time a major virus comes up? We got lucky with Ebola. We might not get so lucky next time...