Ebola kills 67-year old woman as Sierra Leone awaits 42-Day countdown

Health officials in Sierra Leone on Sunday confirmed an Ebola death less than a week after the country’s last known patient was discharged from a hospital.

Samples from the body of a 67-year-old woman who died recently in Kambia district in the country’s north came back positive for the deadly disease, said chief medical officer Dr. Brima Kargbo.

The West African nation began a 42-day countdown toward being declared free of Ebola transmission by WHO after the last known Ebola patient was released last Monday.

Authorities were still trying to determine whether the woman in Kambia died before or after that countdown began, Kargbo said.

The National Ebola Response Center had deployed teams to conduct surveillance and trace people who were in contact with the woman, said OB Sisay, the center’s director.

“We should not despair as we have been expecting this,” Sisay said. “We need to stay focused and maintain our discipline.”

The worst Ebola outbreak in history has killed nearly 4,000 people in Sierra Leone out of more than 13,500 confirmed, probable and suspected cases, according to the World Health Organization. More than 11,300 people have died in the outbreak, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

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