In an announcement on Tuesday, the World Health Organization said that the Ebola epidemic that took thousands of lives in West Africa is not an international public health emergency any more.

In a news briefing, Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director general, said that she has accepted the recommendation of an emergency committee, which has reached at a conclusion that West African countries could contain the tiny number of new cases that kept on arising, and that the chances of an international spread are less.

Dr. Chan has told the countries that had prohibited interaction with the three nations to remove any ban on travel and trade with immediate effect.

The Ebola outbreak has kicked off in Guinea in December 2013, and eventually make over 28,000 people sick in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and took over 11,300 lives.

However, the WHO said in a statement that the three nations had successfully completed a 42-day observation period and a 90-day surveillance time span with nil cases related to the original transmission chain for the virus. Guinea was the last country that has achieved that status, making it successfully through the 90-day period two days back.

Dr. Robert Steffen, a communicable disease expert who is vice-chairman of the WHO emergency committee, said that the original Ebola outbreak has ended, and the original transmission chains have terminated now.

WHO officials said that even then flare-ups of cases sustain a likely consequence that has occurred in the cases of other Ebola outbreaks.

The latest one is a Guinea cluster consisting of five verified and three likely cases, which the WHO said that has been considered as a moderate-level crisis.

The WHO mentioned that as a whole, there were 12 fresh clusters of cases in the three nations since the actual transmission chains were extinguished, but they have taken place less frequently.