Ebola Epidemic: Liberia Brings Back 17 Ebola Patients Who Had Fled The Quarantine Zone

Liberia said Tuesday that it has found all 17 Ebola patients who had fled a quarantine zone on Monday, adding that it has now transferred them to another clinic.

The patients have now been taken to the John F Kennedy Memorial Medical Center in Monrovia. They had escaped a quarantine zone in the capital on Monday when a group of people raided one of the zones. The country's authorities had begun an extensive search to find the patients and bring them back while Guinea announced that several sick people from Liberia had started crossing the border, which was closed 10 days ago. Ebola is highly contagious and several nations in West Africa have declared a state of emergency to contain its spread.

“We are glad to confirm that all of the 17 individuals have been accounted for and have now been transferred to JFK Ebola specialist treatment centre,” Lewis Brown, the country’s information minister, said, according to the Guardian. He added that three doctors who are being treated with the experimental drug ZMapp were showing “remarkable signs of improvement.”

The World Health Organization also said Tuesday that the disease has killed 84 people in the last three days in West Africa, taking the global death toll to 1,229, the Guardian reported. Liberia has been the worst hit country with 466 people having died from the virus while 834 more have been infected.