Just as it seemed Ebola was gone for now, the disease starts to rear its ugly head again; a 17-year old was killed a month after Liberia was declared free of Ebola.

(Photo: Frederick Murphy, AP)

Liberian authorities on Tuesday quarantined the Nedowein close to the capital of Monrovia, where the boy lived. The official announcement came quickly after.

“Liberia has got a re-infection of Ebola,” Tolbert Nyenswah, deputy health minister and head of Liberia’s Ebola response team, said in a press release.

Doctors are now trying to see how he got infected and what can be done to contain the infection. The area is not near Liberia’s borders with Sierra Leone and Guinea, neighboring countries that still have Ebola cases, so how the boy got the disease is still a mystery.

“The Ebola fight is not over but we must not lose hope,” said Liberia’s newly appointed minister of health, Dr. Bernice Dahn. She claimed to see the best in a bad situation, referring to the rapid testing and confirmation that the boy had the virus.

Ebola has claimed over 5,000 lives in Liberia and over 11,000 in West Africa. The disease is still lingering in Sierra Leone and Guinea, where the Ebola outbreak was first reported in March 2014. It was thought that Liberia was safe, but apparently, there’s still work to be done if we want to truly eradicate Ebola.

Enjoyed this article? Join 40,000+ subscribers to the ZME Science newsletter. Subscribe now!