Liberian leader says new Ebola outbreak can be contained

Monrovia (AFP) - Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said in an address to the nation on Thursday she was confident the country would be able to contain its new Ebola outbreak.

Her speech on state television came after the government reported that a 17-year-old boy died of the tropical fever on Sunday after spreading it to two other people, in the first cases of infection for more than three months.

"It is disturbing for us, we are trying to get to the root cause, how it happened. We have not got a full report yet," Sirleaf said, in her first public pronouncement on the new outbreak.

"However, I am confident that our incident management system has the capability to contain it, to isolate it and keep it to where it is so that it cannot go any further."

The latest outbreak comes with the country still recovering from an 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 on May 9.

Karin Landgren, head of the United Nations in Liberia, told AFP the new Ebola cases had not come as a surprise.

"It is very unfortunate to have seen the reoccurrence of Ebola in Liberia, the third round of Ebola coming to Liberia. It was not entirely unpredicted, given the porosity of its borders," she said.

"Liberia did extremely well to be the first out of the three countries to chase Ebola. The important thing is that Liberia now knows what to do when there is a case of Ebola."

Neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone are both still battling the epidemic, which has killed more than 11,200 people in 18 months across west Africa.

Liberia's health system -- embryonic before the crisis, with some 50 doctors and 1,000 nurses for 4.3 million people -- was devastated, losing 192 health workers out of 378 infected.

Hundreds of health workers from now mostly defunct Ebola treatment units protested in front of the health ministry in Monrovia on Wednesday to demand hazard payments they said they were owed for agreeing to tackle Ebola.