Sierra Leone is Ebola free after an 18-month outbreak of the fatal virus killed almost 4,000 in the country, WHO declares

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People washing their hands with soap and bleach to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone. The west African nation went 42 days without any new infections but should still be cautious as neighbouring Guinea still battling the virus. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:45pm, 7 Nov 2015Updated: 10:49pm, 7 Nov 2015

Ebola-ravaged Sierra Leone had beaten an outbreak that killed almost 4,000 of its people and plunged the economy into severe recession, the UN's health agency said yesterday.

"Today, November 7, 2015, the World Health Organisation declares the end of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone," World Health Organisation country representative Anders Nordstrom told a ceremony in the capital Freetown, to prolonged ecstatic cheers after the country's 18-month battle with the disease.

The former British colony recorded about half of the cases in an epidemic that had infected 28,600 people across the three hardest-hit west African nations and claimed 11,300 lives since December 2013.

Experts agree the real death toll is almost certainly significantly higher than the official data, which has been skewed by the under-reporting of deaths in many probable cases.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) medical staff wearing protective clothing treating the body of an Ebola victim at their facility in Kailahun, Sierra Leone last August. Photo: AFP

The crisis has devastated primary health services and immunisation schemes, with the deaths of 221 medical workers - 5 per cent of frontline doctors and 7 per cent of nurses and midwives.

A country is considered free of human-to-human transmission once two 21-day incubation periods have passed since the last known case tested negative for a second time.