Hours after the World Health Organization declared West Africa ebola free on Jan. 15, Sierra Leone announced that tests confirmed a man who had died the week before in the north of the country had been infected with ebola. A second case in Sierra Leone, a relative of the deceased, was confirmed on Jan. 21. The last confirmed case before Jan. 15 had been in Liberia.
Before the most recent cases, Sierra Leone was declared free of the virus on Nov. 7, 2015, after 42 days without a confirmed case.
The ebola virus causes high fevers, vomiting, diarrhea and internal hemorrhaging. Since December 2013, the beginning of the current outbreak, 11,315 people have died from confirmed or suspected ebola infection, most in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Nearly 30,000 people infected with the virus survived.
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