Nigeria has been declared Ebola-free on Monday, 20 October as the country did not report any new cases of the deadly virus in the past 42 days.
Nigeria is the second West African country to receive the World Health Organisation (WHO) certification. Senegal was declared free of Ebola on 17 October, Friday.
"Nigeria is now free of Ebola," WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz, announced at a news conference held in the capital Abuja on Monday, Reuters reported.
"This is a spectacular success story ... It shows that Ebola can be contained but we must be clear that we have only won a battle, the war will only end when West Africa is also declared free of Ebola."
The WHO had announced its plans to declare an "end" of the Ebola outbreak in these two countries, last week: "Nigeria is expected to have passed through the requisite 42 days, with active surveillance for new cases in place and none detected, on Monday 20 October," a WHO statement released on 14 October, read.
Senegal hasn't received any new cases since 29 August, while Nigeria has remained Ebola-free from 5 September, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Nigeria had been struggling hard to eradicate the deadly virus since 20 July, the date on which a Liberian Ebola patient named Patrick Sawyer arrived in the country. Sawyer succumbed to the deadly virus on 24 July.
Till the date, as many as 19 cases of Ebola, including seven deaths have been reported in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, medical experts in the country said that "the country is not adequately prepared to be declared Ebola-free," Daily Independent reported.
Described to be one of the largest outbreaks in the human history, the deadly virus Ebola that became active in December last year has already killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa.
Though Senegal and Nigeria have succeeded in fighting the disease, the virus continues its successful journey in countries like Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It has also claimed one life in the US and two in Spain.
Meanwhile, a 44-year-old Spanish nurse Teresa Romero, who contracted the disease from two infected priests, has successfully recovered from the deadly disease.
