WHO declares Nigeria Ebola-free

The World Health Organization declared Nigeria officially free of Ebola on Monday. The country has now gone 42 days without a new case of the disease.

The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more than 4,500 people, hitting Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea the hardest. Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu and Dr. Faisal Shuaib of the country's Ebola Emergency Operation Center told Time that Nigeria contained the outbreak by immediately declaring an emergency, training local doctors, and keeping the country's borders open.

"It's possible to control Ebola. It's possible to defeat Ebola. We've seen it here in Nigeria," Chukwu told Time. "If any cases emerge in the future, it will be considered — by international standards — a separate outbreak. If that happens, Nigeria will be ready and able to confront it exactly as we have done with this outbreak."

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