The West African nation of Mali is free from the Ebola virus, the nation’s president declared on Saturday as Ebola cases rise in the region.

Although Ebola cases now stand at 16,000 throughout West Africa, Mali itself does not have any reported cases, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said, according to Reuters.

The last patient that had been suffering from the disease had been treated successfully, according to reports. The World Health Organization (WHO) said that Mali had registered eight cases of Ebola — seven confirmed and one probable — which likely came from the neighboring country of Guinea. Six of them died, according to the WHO.

Health specialists are monitoring 285 people who came in contact with them, although they have not shown any signs of contracting the disease. That has prompted Keita to tell a summit in Senegal that there are no cases of Ebola infection in the nation of Mali.

One of the suspected cases actually turned out to be negative recently, and another patient was cured of the disease, meaning that no more Ebola cases exist in the country, he said.

So far, 5,689 people have died of the disease, with 15,935 cases reported overall in eight countries as of Nov. 23, the WHO reported. Almost all of the deaths were in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia — only 15 deaths have been reported elsewhere. An additional 600 cases have been reported in the past week.