--- title: Liberia Releases Its Last Ebola Patient description: Liberia has some good news on Thursday: The country released it's las confirmed Ebola patient. canonical: https://time.com/3733531/liberia-last-ebola-patient/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-05T16:23:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:47.133Z article:section: Health og:title: Liberia Releases Its Last Ebola Patient (For Now) og:description: Liberia has some good news on Thursday: The country released it's las confirmed Ebola patient. og:url: https://time.com/3733531/liberia-last-ebola-patient/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3210c67925bfaf78/6987824f0b72e371b16de039/ebola-last-patient-liberia.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4288 og:image:height: 2412 og:image:alt: Liberia Ebola West Africa og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Liberia Releases Its Last Ebola Patient (For Now) twitter:description: Liberia has some good news on Thursday: The country released it's las confirmed Ebola patient. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3210c67925bfaf78/6987824f0b72e371b16de039/ebola-last-patient-liberia.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Liberia Releases Its Last Ebola Patient (For Now) > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=082bcca6-925d-4458-ba26-647f2ee00b20&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Photographing Ebola: John Moore in Liberia [Watch (HLS stream): Photographing Ebola: John Moore in Liberia](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/7vV9HzPX.m3u8) (6:04)  _Published 2014-12-09. Getty Images photographer discusses his experience covering the deadly Ebola virus outbreak in Liberia_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Mar 5, 2015 4:23 PM UTC  Ebola patient Beatrice Yardolo surrounded by Chinese military health workers as she leaves the Chinese Ebola treatment center were she was treated for the Ebola virus infection outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia on March 5, 2015. Ebola patient Beatrice Yardolo surrounded by Chinese military health workers as she leaves the Chinese Ebola treatment center were she was treated for the Ebola virus infection outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia on March 5, 2015. Abbas Dulleh\_AP by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Mar 5, 2015 4:23 PM UTC Liberia released it’s last confirmed Ebola patient on Thursday. [According to the Associated Press](http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article%5F2015-03-05-AF--West%20Africa-Ebola/id-995807202ab843a8b7dbadbfdeba2456), the patient was a 58-year old English teacher named Beatrice Yardolo who was undergoing treatment at a Chinese-run Ebola center in the capital of Monrovia. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed with TIME that the country currently does not have any confirmed patients in its Ebola treatment centers. Starting Thursday, Liberia can begin its count to 42 days of no new cases—two times the typical incubation period for the virus. At that point, Liberia can be declared Ebola-free. However, the situation is still fragile, according to the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Though MSF is not treating any confirmed patients in its Liberian Ebola treatment center, they still accept suspected cases. It’s quite possible that a person with suspected and later confirmed Ebola comes into their facility at any point. “This is an encouraging sign for Liberia. However, there is no room for complacency as the overall number of new Ebola cases in \[West Africa\] has risen this week,” MSF said in a statement sent to TIME. “From the outset, this outbreak has been characterized by its unpredictability and geographic spread. People move easily over the porous borders that separate Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, so until 42 days pass without a new case in any of the three worst-affected countries we need to remain vigilant.” MSF says serious gaps still persist in the response to the outbreak: “Significant improvements need to be made in contact tracing and surveillance, and we still need to improve regional coordination. Practical collaboration between surveillance teams based in each country need to be implemented as soon as possible to avoid importing new cases into areas considered Ebola-free.” So far a total of 23,983 cases of Ebola have been reported in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, including 9,823 deaths. The WHO [announced Thursday](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/ebola-vaccine-trial/en/) that Guinea will be launching a large efficacy trial for an Ebola vaccine. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] I always like to get some sort of consent from people before I start photographing them. It was very hard, when I had goggles on and I was wearing protective clothing, to establish a connection with people. [ MUSIC ] I had heard about the epidemic this spring. But really it got my attention this summer when MSF Doctors without Borders described the situation in Monrovia the capital of Liberia as potentially catastrophic. When you're working in an infectious area you're very conscious about what you touch and what you don't touch. I don't think I shook anyone's hand. The whole time I was in Liberia. Occasionally we gave what they call a elbow bump and that's and that's it. And everyone understands that it's not being impolite. It's just the way you survive. I spent a lot of time especially during my first visit photographing in the West Point township of Monrovia. It's a very congested area. More than 75, 000 people live on a very small peninsula. And West Point is located right near the heart of Monrovia. And so authorities were specifically concerned about that neighborhood. If Ebola took hold there it can spread quickly throughout the capital. One person told me about an isolation center which had just been opened in the West Point slum. This was a former school, which had been closed because of the epidemic. I went to the school and people were being brought by ambulance, people were very weak. One day a child would be healthy looking and the next day that same child would be face down on a mattress and not moving. They were clearly dehydrated and feverish and were being led into this place which is very dark. It did not have electricity or running water. People were led into rooms. And given mattresses and were basically lying on the floor. I was dressed in protective clothing. Well, inside that school, many of the patients were being taken into a very large classroom with a blackboard. And it smelled very strongly of chlorine because the health workers had been spraying around the room. There were healthy people. And there were dead people lying together in the same room. It was a very haunting situation. The health workers tried to move the healthy people to another place. Some of them were able to get up and walk to another room. This one man really struggled to get up. His name was Abraham. He finally got to his feet. And started walking out the door and he lost his balance and he fell straight back onto his head. The sound of his head hitting the floor is something I'll, I'll never forget. ju, it's just horrible. His wife rushed back into the room and was standing over him and she didn't know what to do. She knew she wasn't supposed to touch him. So she stood over him and waited for health workers to come and then they tried to revive him. I never saw Abraham move again. And I was told he died, later that day. [ MUSIC ] The burial teams put on their personal protective gear. They would go into a house. Spray down the whole area. They would collect a body and put it into a body bag. And so they may have eight Ebola victims to collect during the course of a day. And they would have to suit up and then take it all off eight times. And through all this repetition of course they become better at it and more safe but at the same time there's. There's there's many opportunities for mistakes. And many health workers in Liberia have died in the course of their work. They have some of the hardest jobs you can imagine. Collecting Ebola victims every day. Not just mentally, but physically, because of the heat. And very stressful, cuz they know if they make a mistake, that could be their lives. And, potentially those of their family members. Members if they infect other people. A person who has dies of Ebola, their body almost becomes a virus bomb. It's highly infectious. When people are most likely to be infected is when they touch a dead body. And that happens during burial rights and it's been very difficult for Liberians to accept that their loved ones will be cremated. Cremation is not a normal in Liberian society. I think that day there were two or three dozen bags that were put on top of the wood. And afterwards they, they put fuel on top and they, they set it ablaze. And it burns all night long. The media were not invited to be there. The Liberian government did not want pictures of it cuz they knew that cremation. Nation is very sensitive and a very sore point for Liberians in general. Ebola is a very dehumanizing illness. Because it takes away the ability of people to comfort their loved ones to touch them to clean them. To comfort them, in a terrible time. It's horrible for the family members and traumatic for them because their last memories with this loved one are not ones of comforting and helping, they're ones of standing by, as a team of health workers dressed in anti- contamination suits comes in and takes their loved one away. I think that would be horrible for any of us. 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