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A sign marking an unidentified Ebola victim's grave is seen at a cemetery in Freetown. In the end, the catastrophic epidemic claimed more than 11,000 lives in six West African countries—Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Mali, and Senegal.

▲EVD is spread in the blood, body fluids, or organs of a person or animal with the infection. People have developed Ebola after handling infected animals found ill or dead, including chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope, and porcupines. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), catching Ebola from someone else requires "close and direct" contact with infected body fluids.

▲The 2013-2016 outbreak claimed lives at an alarming rate. In August 2014, WHO declared the epidemic an international public health emergency. Aid agencies were overwhelmed. Assistance from overseas was requested, and forthcoming. Here, a grave digger works in the US-built cemetery for safe burials in Disco Hill, Liberia.

▲Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a viral hemorrhagic fever of humans and other primates. A rare but deadly virus, Ebola causes fever, body aches, and diarrhea, and sometimes bleeding inside and outside the body. It also causes inflammation and tissue damage.

▲The disease quickly spread to the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone. This photograph shows a man suspected of carrying the virus lying in an isolation center set up by the Liberian health ministry in a closed school in Monrovia.

▲In May 2017, reports surfaced of an outbreak of Ebola in the DRC. A total of 583 contacts were monitored, with four deaths confirmed. By July, WHO declared the end of the outbreak. Pictured: a health care worker carries a baby suspected of being infected with Ebola virus.

▲Villagers fix an Ebola awareness poster in Tchomia to raise awareness about Ebola in the local community.

▲In August 2018, the 10th Ebola outbreak in the DRC's history was declared. Pictured is a Congolese health worker preparing to administer Ebola vaccine outside the house of a victim who died from Ebola in the village of Mangina in North Kivu province, where this latest emergency took hold.

▲The DRC outbreak was the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded (the 2014–2016 outbreak in West Africa is the largest). Pictured: a coffin maker is kept busy outside his workshop in Butembo.

▲A Ugandan health worker administers Ebola vaccine to a child in Kirembo.

▲Ebola was first identified in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks: one in Nzara (a town in what is now South Sudan) and the other in Yambuku (then Zaire, now the DRC). Yambuku is a village near the River Ebola, from which the disease takes its name. According to WHO statistics, between 1976 and 2013 a total of 24 outbreaks involving 2,387 cases with 1,590 deaths were confirmed.

▲In May 2018, a new outbreak was confirmed. Health care workers were mobilized, and some 393 people identified as contacts of Ebola patients were followed up.

▲The 2018 outbreak in the DRC was declared over in July 2018. However, the announcement proved premature. Pictured: disinfected health care workers' gear left out to dry near a hospital in Bwana Suri, Ituri province.

▲A child washes her hands as a preventive measure against Ebola at the Church of Christ in Mbandaka.

▲Health workers push a gurney with a corpse at a Red Cross facility in the town of Koidu, Kono district, in eastern Sierra Leone.

▲In a grim ritual repeated across the region, health workers in protective gowns carry the body of a suspected Ebola victim for burial at a cemetery in Freetown.

▲An Ebola survivor, working as a caregiver to babies who were confirmed Ebola cases, holds an infant in the so-called red zone at the Ebola treatment center in Butembo.

▲Distraught and bewildered, a mother of an infant cries near her child's coffin.

▲A health care worker sprays a room during the funeral of a villager suspected of dying of Ebola in Beni, North Kivu province.

▲Health care workers carry a coffin with a baby suspected of dying of the deadly virus, this during a funeral service in Beni, North Kivu province.

▲A suspected Ebola patient stands behind a plastic screen at an Ebola treatment center in Butembo. Insecurity in the region compounded an already dire situation. In April 2019, a WHO epidemiologist was murdered by armed men while he and his colleagues were working on the Ebola response.

▲Exacerbating the outbreak in North Kivu province is the fact that it took place within a remote conflict zone. Mingling with thousands of refugees were armed militia groups fighting over the region's mineral wealth. This, in turn, impeded medical relief efforts.

▲Mid-June 2019 figures released by WHO indicated the 2018-2019 outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had by then killed about 1,400 people from approximately 2,100 confirmed cases. Pictured: health workers dressed in protective suits prepare the body of a Congolese woman for burial after she died of Ebola at a treatment center in Butembo.

▲Pictured: Uganda Red Cross medical staff tally the number of people undergoing Ebola screening at the Mpondwe border, which separates Uganda and the DRC.

▲New technology, treatment, and education aided the fight in DRC against the deadly disease. Pictured: a health worker wearing Ebola protection gear enters the Biosecure Emergency Care Unit (CUBE) at the ALIMA (Alliance for International Medical Action) Ebola treatment center in Beni, a city in the northeast of the country.

▲It was reported in June 2019 that the virus had been detected in neighboring Uganda. Ugandan health workers set up a treatment center in the village of Kirembo, near the border with the DRC.

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Ebola! The very name instills dread and bewilderment. And so it should. Ebola virus disease (EVD), an acute, serious illness that is often fatal if untreated, is a condition that, while rare, spreads at an alarming rate once transmitted.

The disease is passed to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission. Signs and symptoms typically start between two days and three weeks after contracting the virus. Fever, sore throat, muscular pain, and headaches are early indicators. Vomiting, diarrhea, and rash usually follow. Later stages of EVD are marked by decreased function of the liver and kidneys. Soon afterwards, victims can start to bleed both internally and externally. For many, a slow, painful demise is inevitable—the disease has a high risk of death, killing between 25 and 90% of those infected, with an average of about 50%, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

It's an illness that sounds straight out of medieval history books. But this terrible virus is very much part of the 21st century, and has killed thousands across western Africa.

First identified in 1976, Ebola has since risen its ugly head on numerous occasions across several African countries. Click through this gallery for a brief recent history of this awful disease.

▲Pictured: The town of Bwera near the border with the DRC. The frontier is little patrolled, allowing for unchecked human transit.

▲By November 2018, nearly 200 Congolese had died of Ebola, about half of them from the city of Beni. Here, a health care worker sprays an area around the house of a man suspected to be infected with the Ebola virus.

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The largest outbreak to date is the epidemic in West Africa, which occurred from December 2013 to January 2016, with 28,646 cases and 11,323 deaths. Another outbreak in the DRC began in 2017. (

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The dreadful 2014-2016 West African outbreak emerged out of Guinea in March 2014. Researchers with WHO traced the source to an infant who had died in December 2013.

The deadly consequences of Ebola

On June 27, 1976, an Ebola epidemic broke out for the first time in recorded history

25/06/21 por StarsInsider

HEALTH Diseases

It's an illness that sounds straight out of medieval history books. But this terrible virus is very much part of the 21st century, and has killed thousands across western Africa.

First identified in 1976, Ebola has since risen its ugly head on numerous occasions across several African countries. Click through this gallery for a brief recent history of this awful disease.