The World Health Organisation made the declaration on October 20, 2014.

The World Health Organization Representative Rui Gama Vaz told a news conference in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, yesterday, October 20 that Nigeria was Ebola-free after six weeks with no cases detected, Reuters reported.

“This is a spectacular success story”, Rui Gama Vaz said and further stated that , "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.” Nigeria joins Senegal as the only two countries since the current outbreak of the virus in Guinea, which have successfully contained the disease.

 “It’s possible to control Ebola. It’s possible to defeat Ebola. We’ve seen it here in Nigeria,” Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu is quoted as telling the TIME earlier. “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,” Onyebuchi Chukwu said.

The WHO protocol states that for a country to be declared Ebola-free, it has to make 42 days with no new cases (double the incubation period), verify that it actively sought out all possible contacts and show negative test result for any suspected cases.

The country has also won praise from WHO and the international community for its quick response in the containment of the virus, THISDAY reported  and disclosed that since the outbreak of the virus in Nigeria, the country has recorded 19 confirmed cases and more than seven deaths. The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) has asked the federal government to establish Community Ebola Surveillance Units, saying that this is not the time to relax in the fight, as the virus remains a global disease.