Ray of hope: Ebola could end in Liberia by June, researchers say

Liberia, the African nation at the center of world’s deadliest Ebola outbreak, could see an end to the epidemic by June if 85 percent of sick people get hospital care, U.S. researchers said Tuesday. Researchers at the University of Georgia and Pennsylvania State University devised a model that accounts for variables like how many patients are hospitalized and how many health care workers are infected, rates of transmission from funerals where the corpses of victims are touched and kissed, and the relative effectiveness of Ebola control measures.

What’s needed is to maintain the current level of vigilance and keep pressing forward as hard as we can.

John Drake, an associate professor in the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology

Thanks to the model of better hospitalization and preventive care, cases have begun to decline in Liberia in recent weeks. Schools are set to reopen next month after closing in July as the nation struggled with the fast-moving outbreak of hemorrhagic fever. In all, the WHO says 8,235 people have died and more than 20,000 have been infected with Ebola - most in the West African nations of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone - since the outbreak began late in 2013.

Africa