The 37-year-old man was believed to have died from the virus after several days lying motionless in the Monrovia road following the refusal to treat him by local ambulance workers.
But onlookers in Liberia’s Ebola-ravaged capital erupted into cheers and applause when funeral workers arrived to collect the ‘corpse’ and the man started moving.
The incident was accidentally captured by a team from ABC News as they shot a segment about the abandonment of Ebola victims.
In the clip, reporter Dr Richard Besser is talking about the man as he disinfected and covered with a blanket by a burial team – only for someone to shout ‘He’s alive!’
Paramedics collected the man and his state is currently unknown, although it is unlikely he would have survived for much longer, according to Dr Besser, who says a shortage of hospital beds has led to the mass-abandonment of infected people in the Liberian capital.
