2014 Ebola Outbreak Research Paper

There has been an acute worry roaming about the United States concerning the Ebola Outbreak. Originally, Ebola had never touched the United States until September of 2014. (4) The disease was originated from and named after a river in the Democratic of Congo. Since discovered, there have been known cases in Africa. There have been many very deadly cases of Ebola - the fatality rate is estimated to from about fifty to ninety percent. (2) To the United States, there had never been any worry about the disease until September twentieth of 2014. A man by the name of Thomas Eric Duncan boarded flight 822 from Liberia to Dallas, Texas. Flight 822 was where it all began. Nobody had any

In late 2013, Ebola virus disease (EVD), a deadly and lethal disease, remerged in West Africa spreading to various countries in the region. In humans, the disease is spread through contact with infected bodily fluids leading to haemorrhagic fever (World Health Organization [WHO], 2015). Originating in 1976 in equatorial Africa, past outbreaks with a few hundred cases had been contained within rural, forested areas in Uganda and Congo (Piot, 2012). In 2014, a total of 20, 206 cases and 7,905 deaths were reported to have occurred in up to eight countries worldwide. Of all cases and deaths resulting from the disease, 99.8% occurred in three neighbouring West African countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea (WHO, 2014). With a case fatality rate from about 50% to 90%, and the absence of preventative or curative therapies, the Ebola epidemic has led to overall global alarm and further elucidated existing global health disparities that perpetuated the epidemic with these West African countries.

In 2014 the United States was hit with a force far more deadly and dangerous than many threats received. The ebola virus took the world by storm after it was carried to the United States and spread by people who had visited West Africa. This virus was all the more deadly as it often took hours for any symptoms to occur. In this time the Center for Disease Control spent much time and many resources looking for answers to the many questions they had. Under the time constraint and scrutinizing public, they had to determine what ebola was, what it did and its effects on the general public.

Ebola is a virus that is transmitted to other individuals through direct contact with blood and body fluids of those infected (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). In the most recent outbreak in 2014, the video Ebola Outbreak (2014) illustrated that the virus quickly became a worldwide epidemic. As the virus became so widespread throughout Africa, Ebola-infected so many people in such a short time frame. While the organization, Doctors without Borders was intimately involved early on, they quickly learned that the manpower they had to offer was not nearly enough. The group identified that they had no way of performing contact tracing, which is a way of following patients that were contaminated and quickly led to additional cases of infection in astronomical numbers. According to the follow-up video, Outbreak (2014) the organization Doctors without Borders communicated to the World Health Organization (WHO) made a valiant

In 2014 the world watched in horror as West Africa experienced the largest Ebola epidemic in history. Affected countries in Africa included Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone and the epidemic, having begun in December 2013, went on for a full year, with additional cases occurring throughout 2015. Over 19,000 cases were reported by December 2014 and of those, 7,518 lost their lives. Today, we know that in total, over 11,000 people lost their lives ("Previous case counts", 2016). There were many factors at play in this outbreak, such as the emergence of a new strain Ebola virus; a lack of preparedness in West Africa, where Ebola had not been seen prior to 2014; a shortage of health care workers and subsequent death of many more them, leading

What was usually a disease contained in regions of sub-Saharan Africa became a global worry. Although the outbreak started in Guinea, it quickly spread to two neighboring countries. From these three countries, cases were then transmitted to the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom. No vaccine was available to stop the spread of Ebola. This deadly disease went from being a problem in only a small region of the world to being seen in three noncontiguous countries, which could have sowed the seeds of a pandemic had the cases not been contained. As a global community, we gain from our interactions with all citizens, but we must also be aware that we can also suffer from diseases that we think of as only affecting the “others.” If we do not help those “others,” we may become part of

Although Ebola caught the world’s attention during the 1995 outbreak in Zaire, the first outbreak occurred in 1976. As the chart below displays, 71% of the people infected died as a result of Ebola during this first outbreak (Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 56 (2): 247-270, 1978). With the current outbreak, this ratio has dramatically decreased as a result of scientific research leading to early detection, but the current infected population is more than 20 times the amount of any previous outbreak and this number continues to grow as no vaccine exists to prevent the disease.

UNICEF officer, Suzanne Mary Beukes provided a clearer insight to how poor the country of Guinea is when she wrote, "The world has virtually quarantined a country in which 43 percent of people were already living on less than $1.25 a day prior to this health crisis” (Gholipour, 2014). The countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone (the countries where outbreaks primarily occurred), are some of the poorest countries in the world as a result of their recent civil war and the damaged health and education infrastructures that followed. (“Factors that Contributed to the Spread of Ebola,” n.d., para. 10). The poor infrastructures led to the delayed transportation of patients and lab work to labs and hospitals in addition to the lack of communication between health facilities. In addition to the lack of health facilities, there was shortage of healthcare workers. “Prior to the outbreaks, the three countries (Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) had a ratio of only one to two doctors per nearly 100,000 population” (“Factors that Contributed to the Spread of Ebola,” n.d., para. 15). The poverty in these cities and countries lead people to want to move to a better standard of living, be treated for the virus, and look for food &

Despite modest health improvements in the decade or so following the end of active conflict, the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic revealed ongoing systemic issues. The global involvement in the Mano River region countries, and particularly the role of the World Health

Ebola was first recognized in 1976 as the cause of outbreaks of disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as Zaire) and in Sudan. About three hundred people in each of the two nations were infected with the virus, resulting in a mortality rate of 88% in Zaire, and 53% in Sudan (Bulletin of the WHO 1978). The disease as it was discovered spread through direct contact of unmans to humans, and then thought, from non-human primates to humans. The epidemic was a result of unsafe and unsanitary hospital practices, and non-sterilized medical equipment. The disease was then contained, however sporadic outbreaks of the Zaire and Sudan Ebola subtypes have risen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Uganda, and Sudan; one of the latest outbreaks was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in September of 2007.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had many key audiences it was required to communicate with during the Ebola outbreak. Most importantly, the CDC needed to be communicating with employees within the CDC. They needed to be on the same page as to how messages were being released and controlled, as this was a very sensitive subject. Furthermore, it was imperative that heath care providers around the world were receiving appropriate information. U.S. government agencies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and local and regional public health officials (Dallas County Department of Health and Human Services and the Texas Department of Health and Human Services (DSHS)) were also key audiences. More specifically, the nurses

The FRONTLINE documentary, Outbreak, tells the story of the Ebola outbreak of 2014. They trace the disease way back to where the very first cases of it were scene. The outbreak of ebola originated in the West African country of Guinea. It quickly begins to spread to other countries like Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The spreading was a result of individuals who contracted the disease moving and traveling across Africa. Many of these countries believe that they could control the disease at a small-scale, but they surely underestimated the severity of the outbreak. As more and more cases arose, and the disease spread even within the hospitals and quarantine sites, it seemed liked there was no resolution. With so many unanswered questions and no solution

Every illness begins at a single source that can rapidly spread to susceptible individuals who are completely unaware of what is occurring before them. This infection sparks a chain of events that can quickly transform a small illness into an epidemic. On March 25, 2014 the World Health Organization(WHO) announced the outbreak of a new strain of the Ebola virus disease with 86 suspected cases[15]. From this point onward, constant updates have been documented, and until the end of November 2014 the condition grew in number and prevalence[7]. With additional efforts and protocols instituted by organizations such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the virus began to fall until the present day. Fortunately, a pharmaceutical company

Between the years of 2013 and 2015, at least 26,044 citizens of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone fell victim to “confirmed, probable, and suspected” cases of Ebola, with around half of them ultimately succumbing to the virus and perishing (“Ebola Situation Report”). In that time period, pharmaceutical companies in the United States turned a blind eye to the news—of the numerous multi-billion dollar corporations that the country houses, not a single one was willing to funnel funds into this cause until more incidences of the disease sprouted up in North America (Etelson). Margaret Chan, the former Director-General of the World Health Organization, knew exactly why this was the case: “a profit-driven industry does not invest in products for markets that cannot pay” (Etelson).

Ebola, a disease that attacks the kidneys and livers of mammals, first surfaced in 1976, near the Ebola River in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, there have been about nine outbreaks of Ebola throughout Africa, however, no outbreak has been as large as the most recent. An outbreak usually begins when one person, commonly known as “patient zero”, begins to display flu-like symptoms, such as bloodshot eyes, rashes, chest pain, a chough, or stomach