World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that Nigeria has successfully contained the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) after surpassing the month-long duration without a new case.

It was announced today that Nigeria is Ebola-Free after six weeks without any cases of the virus. It has now joined Senegal as the only two countries, since the outbreak in Guinea, which have successfully contained the disease.

“Nigeria is now free of Ebola,” WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz told a news conference in the capital Abuja.

The sub-committee on surveillance, epidemiology, and laboratory testing endorsed this by establishing today as the date of the end of this outbreak despite speculations regarding this topic. The suspected case of EVD in Spain was believed to have originated from Nigeria through a passenger flying from Nigeria via Paris.

Nigeria’s Health Minister, Dr Onyebuchi Chukwu, in what was considered a critical assessment of WHO’s declaration, stated that the protocol for declaring a country Ebola-free is more theoretical than practical. “Like I said in my speech at the UN General Assembly, as long as there is a single case of Ebola in any part of the world, every country is at risk. In his opinion countries would still have to take the necessary measures to guard against the outbreak of the virus in their territories as other parts of the world are still affected.

Countries still fighting the virus include Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the US and Spain. So far, 4,555 people had reportedly died from the disease, while the total infection cases number over 9,216.

Despite Nigeria’s commendable curtail of the spread, the country’s Medical Association (NMA) has asked the government to establish Community Ebola Surveillance programmes to ensure there is no re-occurrence.