Sierra Leone

Heartwarming footage captured the moment an adopted boy from Sierra Leone, who now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, was brought to tears when he caught a glimpse of his first-ever birthday cake.

The government of Sierra Leone appears to have concluded a deal this month with China to convert 250 acres of beachfront property and protected rainforest into a fishing plant and harbor.

International public health authorities confirmed 52 cases and 22 deaths in the ongoing outbreak of Ebola virus in Democratic Republic of Congo this week, where locals’ fear that medical professionals are intentionally spreading the disease has triggered at least two cases of families stealing patients out of hospitals.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has slapped sanctions on Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea, and Sierra Leone for “lack of cooperation” in accepting their citizens who face deportation from the United States, including many who have committed serious crimes like murder in American communities, reveals the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The government of Guinea confirmed Wednesday that five people had died after contracting the Ebola virus in the southern border state of Macenta, prompting a closing of the border and a manhunt for hundreds of villagers suspected of having had contact with the virus.

The government of Guinea has confirmed four cases of Ebola and two deaths, the first in months following the official conclusion of the 2014 outbreak in that country that took the lives of over 11,000 people.

The Health Ministry of Brazil has requested that American virologists travel to Zika-affected areas and hold high-level meetings with their medical experts, as they collaborate to find a vaccine to prevent the disease from spreading further.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the outbreak of Ebola virus that began in February 2014 officially over, nearly two years after doctors diagnosed the first case of Ebola in this outbreak in a rural town in Guinea.

A Sierra Leonean journalist is confirming that presidential advisor Alhaji Kargbo independently signed an agreement to take in potentially hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage from Lebanon, currently struggling to meet its people’s waste management needs.

The men recruited to incinerate the bodies of those killed by the Ebola outbreak in Liberia last year mostly live together in squalor, succumbing to alcohol abuse, as their community rejects them for being involved in the taboo treatment of the dead.

Two months after being declared Ebola-free, the west African nation of Liberia has confirmed the death of a boy who succumbed to the virus, forcing the government to quarantine his family and place hundreds under surveillance.

Cheers erupted and people danced in the streets Saturday as Sierra Leone marked the end of the Ebola outbreak within its borders, although neighboring Guinea still struggles to stamp out the deadly virus that has killed more than 11,000 mostly in West Africa.

The estimated 460 Cuban doctors deployed to west Africa to participate in the fight against the Ebola outbreak developing there last year have not been paid the car, home, or World Health Organization (WHO) salaries they were promised if they returned from the mission healthy.

A new study by the World Health Organization has found that the Ebola virus can live in the semen of survivors for at least nine months, dramatically increasing the risk of sexual transmission of the disease in west Africa, where an outbreak that began in March 2014 has not yet been fully contained.

LONDON (AP) — London’s Royal Free Hospital says a nurse who recovered from Ebola last year is being treated for an unusual late complication of the infection. A military aircraft flew Pauline Cafferkey from her home in Scotland to London

While Sierra Leone patiently moves towards concluding a 42-day period in which it can be declared Ebola-free, a study shows that deaths continue to skyrocket in the nation not due to Ebola, but of the fear of hospitals left in its aftermath.

700 people in northern Sierra Leone have been quarantined, as the country, recently celebrating the discharge from the hospital of their last Ebola patient, diagnosed a 16-year-old girl with the disease.

The World Health Organization is warning that the time frame in which male Ebola survivors can spread the virus through their semen may be longer than previously anticipated, keeping an outbreak that began in February 2014 alive as those who are considered free of the disease engage in sexual activity.

The government of Sierra Leone received a mere six-day respite from fighting Ebola, as a new case announced today resets the countdown clock to declaring the nation Ebola-free. The body of a 67-year-old woman in remote Kambia district has tested positive for the virus.

The government of Sierra Leone has quarantined 624 people in the past week following the death by Ebola of a man in a town that had not experienced any cases of the deadly virus in months. While the outbreak continues with little natural end in sight, however, scientists have announced a breakthrough vaccine development that could eradicate Ebola for good.

A radio soap opera launched in Sierra Leone in January to spread awareness of how to properly defend against Ebola was renewed this week for a third season after the series, funded by a national bank, proved a smash hit.

The United Nations special envoy for Ebola warned today that the outbreak that has taken more than 11,000 lives in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea is far from over, with 30 people a week being diagnosed with the disease on average. The UN warned that, while the figure appears low compared to the number this time last year, the fact that most cases are people not on watch lists indicates the threat is much larger than it appears.

A new “cluster” of Ebola cases in a coastal region of Liberia has been identified, after a 17-year-old boy, initially misdiagnosed with malaria, was confirmed dead of the virus. Experts have failed to find the source of this new outbreak and are treating it as a separate set of incidents from the massive outbreak that has taken more than 10,000 lives in West Africa since February 2014.

The 17-year-old boy confirmed dead of the Ebola virus in Liberia, ending a 49-day Ebola-free streak for the nation, may be a second patient zero, and not the victim of the Ebola outbreak that began in February 2014 and has taken thousands of lives since then.

The Liberian government announced on Monday that two separate tests had confirmed a 17-year-old boy had died of Ebola on June 28, the first Ebola death in that country in 49 days. The government has quarantined the town where the boy died and announced emergency measures to contain the disease.

Doctors in Port Loko, a northwestern region of Sierra Leone outside Freetown, are reporting a significant drop in the number of mothers bringing their children to hospitals for routine vaccinations. The mothers, they say, fear exposing their children to a resurgent Ebola virus, and in keeping them from hospitals are risking triggering the spread of polio or measles.

Medical workers in Guinea and Sierra Leone reported 31 new cases of Ebola in the pass week, a significant increase following two months of relative decline that had the United Nations close to declaring the outbreak over. Lax monitoring rules and potential smuggling of Ebola patients past medical officials may be to blame, journalists report.

The UN’s emergency Ebola response headquarters in Ghana’s capital, Accra, is to close as the outbreak slows.

A nurse employed by a health NGO who returned from work in Sierra Leone has become the first person to test positive for Ebola in Italy, officials confirmed on Wednesday.

Sierra Leone has experienced a dramatic fall in the number of Ebola cases in the nation over the past month, prompting the government to reopen schools and attempt to return civilians to normal daily life. Much has changed in the past year due to the outbreak, including the population of stray dogs, which has doubled to an estimated half a million.

The government of Sierra Leone reopened schools nationwide on Tuesday, after closing them for nine months to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus. President Ernest Koroma’s confidence in reopening the schools is a sign that the Ebola outbreak may be, after a year of international struggle to contain it, nearing an end.

The Guardian published a damning report on recruitment agencies selling women as slaves in Kuwait. These agencies lure women to the tiny country with promises of work, but are “sold like slaves” and resold numerous times. The publication interviewed women from Sierra Leone, but research suggests this is a long-term problem in Kuwait affecting women from other countries, as well.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the medical charity that first alerted the world of the spread of Ebola, has now faulted some national governments as well as the World Health organization for ignoring the warning and throwing roadblocks in the way of eradicating the disease before it grew.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the head of the United Nations mission against the Ebola virus in Africa, told the BBC he expects the outbreak that began in February 2014 to be vanquished “by the end of the summer.”

Emails obtained by the Associated Press show discussions among the senior administrators of the World Health Organization from as early as June 2014, in which officials refused to yet declare a state of emergency in west Africa over the Ebola outbreak for fear of angering local governments and interfering with the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

Reports surfaced this weekend that eleven U.S. health workers in Sierra Leone are being flown home after being exposed to the deadly Ebola virus, the largest such group repatriated. The news arrives amid a political tempest that has the Vice President of that nation demanding asylum in the United States after being expelled from office while under Ebola quarantine.