By Serigne Ndiaw
DAKAR, Senegal
Senegal's only confirmed Ebola patient, a Guinean student, has recovered from the deadly virus, the Senegalese Health Ministry has said.
"Tests conducted on the latest samples from the patient came out negative," read a Health Ministry statement issued late Tuesday.
On August 29, Senegalese Health Minister Awa Marie Coll-Seck announced that a Guinean student was carrying the virus, making him the country's first confirmed Ebola infection.
The student was quarantined at a hospital in capital Dakar where he was treated, Coll-Seck had said at the time.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has described Ebola as "one of the most virulent" viruses in the world.
The tropical fever, which first appeared in 1976 in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, can be transmitted to humans from wild animals.
It also reportedly spreads through contact with the body fluids of infected persons or of those who have died of the disease.
A contagious disease for which there is no known treatment or cure, Ebola has claimed nearly 2,100 lives in West Africa in recent months, according to the latest WHO figures.
Until now, most Ebola deaths have been registered in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
Few have been recorded in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Senegal shut its borders with Equatorial Guinea on August 21 in hopes of preventing cross-border transmission of the virus.
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