As Ebola Ebbs in Africa, Focus Turns From Death to Life

MONROVIA, Liberia — Life is edging back to normal after the deadliestEbola outbreak in history.

At the height of the epidemic, Liberians met horrific deaths inside the blue-painted walls of the Nathaniel V. Massaquoi Elementary School, as classrooms became Ebola holding centers and the education of a nation’s children, shuttered in their homes for safety, was abruptly suspended.

Now, parents are streaming into the schoolyard once again, not to visit their stricken loved ones, but with their restless children in tow, to register for the start of classes in a delayed and shortened academic year.

Eager to learn and to play with her friends again, Florence Page, 11, bounded ahead, brimming with pent-up energy, as her mother, Mabel Togba, paused to look warily into the school building through its padlocked metal screen doors.

“They still haven’t told us that Liberia is free of Ebola, so I’m still afraid,” said Ms. Togba, 42. “But it’s better than to leave my children at home doing nothing.”

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A baby delivered in the West Point township of the city. CreditJohn Moore/Getty Images

New Ebola cases in Liberia, where streets were littered with the dead just a few months ago, now number in the single digits, according to the World Health Organization. In neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea, the other two nations in the Ebola hot zone, new cases have fallen sharply in the last month, dropping to fewer than 100 in a week at the end of January — a level not seen in the region since June.

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