Liberian Health Crisis Is Cholera, Not Ebola

Easing fears about another potential Ebola epidemic, the World Health Organization said Wednesday that 10 of 15 suspected cases in Liberia were in fact cholera.

The U.N. agency late last week said one Liberian refugee had fallen sick with Ebola and had likely infected four other people sharing his hut in a border village near the Ivory Coast.

It immediately sent a team to another Liberian village, River Bay, upon hearing reports that 10 people there had died of Ebola-like symptoms - diarrhea, fever and hemorrhaging.

But the WHO experts confirmed on the spot that these deaths were due to cholera, which is rampant in the poverty-stricken, war-ravaged country in Western Africa, WHO spokesman Michael Loohan said.