Ebola May Stop Spreading by End of 2015

The World Health Organization announced that African countries are expected to be declared Ebola-free by the end of 2015.

GENEVA (Sputnik) — African countries are expected to be declared Ebola-free by the end of 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward said Wednesday.

Guinea and Sierra Leone are currently considered to be Ebola-affected countries, while Liberia was declared virus-free and entered 90-day intensive surveillance period on September 3.

"These countries can and will hit zero and that this end date of 2015, our target, is really feasible," Aylward said, adding that there were no Ebola cases registered in Guinea, one of the three most hard-hit countries, over the last week.

The current Ebola epidemic started in southern Guinea in December 2013 and later spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.

As of the beginning of September, 11,302 people died of Ebola out of 28,107 infected, according to the WHO data. The majority of the infected, 13,609, are from Sierra Leone, while Liberia has shown the highest mortality rate with 4,808 deaths from the virus.