Liberia said today a teenager who died of Ebola fever had spread the virus to at least two more people, confirming the first outbreak of the tropical disease for months.
Health official Cestus Tarpeh told AFP the pair had been in physical contact with the 17-year-old before his death in a village near the country's international airport, around an hour's drive southeast of Monrovia.
"We are still waiting for more results of blood tests," said Tarpeh, a spokesman for the health department in Margibi County, adding that a herbalist who had treated the boy had evaded the authorities and was on the run.
The news came a day after Health Minister Bernice Dahn announced the first case of Ebola in Liberia for around three months, warning that it was "likely that we will find additional cases".
The new outbreak comes with the country still reeling from a nightmarish epidemic which wrecked its health service and economy and left 4,800 Liberians dead.
Before the new cases Liberia had reported its last victim on March 20 and was declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization on May 9.
Local media reported that the 17-year-old had fallen ill on June 21 and died three days later, although this has not been confirmed by the government.
There were no immediate details either on the two new cases, as epidemiologists scrambled Wednesday to trace and quarantine anyone else who may have had contact with the teenager.
The country's neighbours Guinea and Sierra Leone are both still battling the outbreak, which has killed more than 11,200 people across west Africa, but the coastal Margibi County where the teenager died is nowhere near either border.
The health ministry said it had no reason to believe the teenager had visited either country and the source of his infection remains a mystery.
Residents in Monrovia, a crowded chaotic city of around one million people, spoke of their fears that the Margibi outbreak was going to develop into a full-blown epidemic.
"I am scared -- I am so scared that I don't even know where to start," said Jeneba Freeman, 45, a stallholder in the capital's Redlight market.
Ebola is spread among humans via the bodily fluids of recently deceased victims and people showing symptoms of the tropical fever, which include vomiting, diarrhoea and -- in the worst cases -- massive internal haemorrhaging and external bleeding.
