Everywhere you look you read or see something that talks about Ebola. The Ebola outbreaks occurring in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are growing larger and larger. These countries are at a greater risk because they lack resources, have weak health systems, and they have experienced long periods of conflict. This is the largest outbreak with more cases and deaths since Ebola was first discovered. United States doctors and missionaries have traveled to these countries to help treat infected people. However, there have been cases where U.S. citizens have contracted the disease and were brought back to the United States to be treated. This caused a raised concern about the disease spreading in the U.S. The physical, cultural, economic, political…show more content… Ebola outbreaks have occurred over multiple years, the Centers of Disease Control recorded the first outbreak in 1976. Research posted on the CNN Health website indicates that Ebola received its named after the Ebola River in Africa where the disease was first recognized in 1976 but the exact origin and natural host of the virus are unknown. In an article published by Virginia The U.Va. Magazine called “Punching Out: The Ebola virus breaks through the immune system like a boxer”, researchers talk about the strides they are making to figure out how the virus works. Lukas Tamm is one of the researchers who is studying the virus. In an interview Tamm discusses why there is so little that’s actually known about the virus. One of the reasons was because of the lack in medical technology during 1976, the year that Ebola first appeared. Technology advancements today allow scientist to see how the virus works at a cellular level (U.Va. Magazine,…show more content… Each Ebola virus particle is covered in a membrane of these attachment proteins, or glycoproteins” (Tam).
Now, doctors are able to see how the virus works at cellular levels but what still remains unknown is how patient zero contracted the virus. Patient zero, the first person to contract the virus at the start of the outbreak was Emile Ouamouno. Emile was a two-year-old boy who is from a village in the southwestern region of Guinea. Physical geography, the environmental dynamics, plays an important role in the spread of Ebola. It is believed that tropical animals such as primates and fruit bats carry the virus.
In the current outbreak, researchers believe that the virus spread from Emile Ouamouno to his siblings, mother, and grandmother. The article “Ebola: Who is patient zero? Disease traced back to 2-year-old in Guinea”, was written by Holly Yan and Esprit Smith was published by CNN, traced the spread of Ebola. Reports show that the virus spread outside of the village after several people attended the grandmother’s funeral. The New England Journal of Medicine then shows the virus spreading to a midwife who then passed the disease along to relatives in another village and to the healthcare worker who was treating her. CNN reports that the health care worker was then treated at a
