Liberia declared Ebola free

Liberia has been declared Ebola free by the government and the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Saturday after 42 days with no new cases.

The West African nation was one of the worst hit by the deadly virus alongside neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, after more than 4,700 people died during the year-long epidemic.

As celebrations rung out the country, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) urges caution until the worst outbreak of the disease ever recorded was also extinguished in neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone.

The MSF said that Liberia's completion of the WHO's benchmark for the end of an Ebola outbreak - 42 days without a new case, marking twice the maximum incubation period of the virus - should not lead to complacency.

 “We can’t take our foot off the gas until all three countries record 42 days with no cases,” Mariateresa Cacciapuoti, MSF’s head of mission in Liberia, said in a statement.

She urged Liberia to step up cross-border surveillance to prevent Ebola slipping back into the country.

A total of 11,005 people have died from Ebola in the three West African neighbors since the outbreak began in December 2013, according to the WHO.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who toured Ebola treatment units in the capital Monrovia, said that, while Liberia could take pride in winning the battle against the disease, work was not finished.

"At times when you are at your worst, it is when you become your best. That was what happened to us," she said during a speech at the country's incident management center. "The task is not yet over ... The challenge is that we stay at zero."

Monday has been decreed by the government as a day of thanksgiving. The country's Christians have been asked to pray for the dead on Sunday, with Muslims to do the same on Friday.

Liberia was recording hundreds of new cases a week at the peak of the outbreak between August and October, causing international alarm.

International aid organizations were forced to step in as the Ebola outbreak ravaged the region's poorly equipped and understaffed healthcare systems.

According to the WHO, a total of 868 health workers have caught the virus in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone since the start of the outbreak, of whom 507 died.