From NPR

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf hopes to ring in the holidays with an ambitious goal: no new cases of Ebola in her country by Dec. 25.

“We believe we had to set a target that gave our people hope, a target that would make them more committed to taking all the precautionary measures,” she says. “Yes, it’s called ambitious, but sometimes you have to take a risk in being ambitious.”

If anything, the recent drop in Ebola cases is a hopeful sign. The outbreak has killed more than 3,000 people in Liberia, and at its height, the West African nation was reporting the most new cases of the virus per week. But at one point last week, the Liberian Ministry of Health reported that in the country’s largest Ebola hospital — equipped with 250 beds — there were only eight patients.

Yet while numbers are falling in the capital Monrovia, new outbreaks have been popping up in remote areas, which could reverse the progress. That’s one of the biggest challenges to hitting the target, Johnson-Sirleaf tells us.

 

 

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