Ah, young 18 month old boy named Emil died only four days before.

This child had been completely healthy, acting normally playing regularly in the bat infested backyard of his rural home.

But then he developed flu like symptoms, which spiraled and spiraled until he passed.

Unfortunately, such an occurrence is not uncommon for the young Children of Guinea, a country not known for the quality of its health care.

But then, just a few days later, his sister died too than his mother than his grandmother than a family friend, each of which had attended to the boy in his final days.

This was not normal, but nobody was exactly sure what had happened to these people.

Their symptoms resembled that of a number of illnesses common to the area, such as malaria and typhoid fever.

But in the end the doctor settled on cholera.

Given this infections, profile and propensity in Guinea, but then the cholera spread.

Now cholera is contagious.

It's the idea of it.

Spreading is not surprising, but a far higher proportion of patients than predicted died.

Medical staff were starting to get concerned that this might not be just another of the areas all too common cholera outbreaks.

And so they pass word on to mid saw some frontier Anglicized as Doctors Without Borders who were by chance already on the ground in Guinea treating a malaria outbreak.

The organization liaised with the infectious disease experts at their head office in Geneva who presented unsettling hypothesis.

They weren't sure, but they agreed that it might not be cholera, and then it might be Ebola.

The outbreak quite closely followed the profile of this virus, but Ebola had never really been an issue in West Africa.

For the most part, it had on Lee ever been seen in Central Africa what is now north and south Sudan, Uganda, the DRC, the Congo and Gabbana thes Current cases were well over 1000 miles from the closest previous outbreak to the idea of the virus.

Simply randomly popping up in the middle of the gun and forest was unlikely, but none the less terrifying so they needed to be sure.

Therefore, Med Sans Frontiere gather samples, packed them in three layers of protective packaging, loaded them on a plane charter from Glick.

A do flew them to the capital, then transfer them onto the overnight Air France flight to Paris, where they were analyzed in a specialized laugh.

Unfortunately, the worst of their worst fears were confirmed.

Not only was this Ebola, but it was the Zaire strain, the most deadly of Ebola species.

That confirmation was publicly announced by the World Health Organization on March 23rd 2014 nearly three months after the young boy for 1,000,000 do died.

While the W.

H.

O was concerned the rest of the world was not, the rest of the world didn't even realize what was going on or it's devastating potential.

The New York Times, for example, took four whole days after the announcement to publish their first article about the virus on 100 and 46 word right up, mostly focusing on the government's ban on bat soup in order to curb the spread.

This would be the first of thousands of articles they would write over the next few years about this virus.

This was the start of the worst Ebola epidemic in history.

Now that the virus was identified, the goal shifted to stopping it.

The organization most in charge of coordinating the international response to epidemics is the World Health Organization.

The members of this United Nations agency include a majority of the world's countries, and so when there's a public health emergency, it falls on them to respond.

Once word reached the W.

H O, their first step was to activate their global outbreak alert and response network.

This includes essentially fast response medical teams for epidemics, the first of which in this case arrived on March 28th just five days after the initial alert.

Their first goal was to find the links between the patients, the draw maps of who infected who in order to try and just quarantine everyone exposed and stop the virus before it could even gain its legs.

This was not particularly difficult in this case, as the cases in 1,000,000 do attracted attention early on, but the news was also not particularly good.

You see, when the first victim, the young a meal, was sick, his mom and sister took him to stay across the village at his grandmother's house.

When that grandmother later became sick, she went to visit a friend, a nurse in the nearby, larger town of Greco do in order to get some help.

Weeks later, that nurse to develop symptoms and sought help from a friend of Hiss, a doctor in the even larger town of Miss Ente, without doctor to fell ill, he set off to seek help in the country's capital, but died along the way, and so his body was then sent to the even larger city of kissy do goo, where the funeral was held.

Now, while Ebola does not spread through the air, it does through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected patient, whether dead or alive.

So hospitals and burial facilities are were.

Most transmissions occur, especially if proper quarantine procedures are not followed.

Considering that at this point nobody knew it was Ebola, nobody was following these procedures in 1,000,000 do quickly due cente or kissy do so with each infected patient that went to the city's.

More and more people were infected, who themselves infected Maur, and so on and so forth.

By the time medical institutions knew this was Ebola.

Three months after the first case, it was too late to trace all the transmissions.

The spread was beyond control.

Therefore, focus shifted toe isolating and treating the infected.

The W, H O MSF and other international organisations shipped in staff by the planeload know much longer than a week after detection.

There were more than 100 for medical staff in the country.

The other important goal was to ship in as much protective gear as possible doctors, nurses and other medical staff or at the most risk for transmission from Ebola patients and therefore, in order to not become patients themselves.

The Muto wear as they became known Ebola suits, of which thousands were shaped in within weeks.

The country's Ministry of Health quickly set up a system where, if anyone suspected anyone of having Ebola, they could call a hotline 115 for a doctor to come out on a motorcycle and investigate.

If this doctor believe the patient could indeed have the virus, they would call out a team from MSF, which in full biohazard suits would transport the patient to an isolation ward at a hospital in Conakry, the capital.

This system was quickly overwhelmed with up to 300 calls a day, but it seemed to actually work by the beginning of May, Less than two months after the initial alert, this hospital in Conakry, where the patients were isolated, reached its first week without a new Ebola patients.

Then it reached its second and its third as three weeks is the incubation period for Ebola, the period it takes for symptoms to arise in virus carriers.

You meant that as long as nobody in the hospital was infected, the spread would be over.

With that, preparations began for the retreat of the NGOs in Guinea.

It was crisis averted, job well done mission accomplished until May 27th.

That's when a new patient came in and then more came dozens more from all around the country.

It turned out that the Ebola had not, in fact been stopped.

But rather, many of the patients in the rural isolated regions of the country has simply become distrustful of medical professionals.

Many had seen foreign medical staff in their towns before they had seen Ebola victims, and therefore many came to the conclusion that it was these staff who were spreading the virus rather than preventing its spread.

Therefore, when people in these villages became sick, they simply didn't report it to the country's medical system, which made the problem worse.

As unprotected, untrained townspeople cared for the infected well.

The May of 2014 saw just 74 official cases, fewer than each of the previous two months.

June saw 290 by June.

With the resurgence in cases, the world was now paying attention to get close by.

The borders between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone were quickly closed down, but it was too little, too late.

The virus had spread.

That June also marked the first month at both Liberia and Sierra Leone recorded significant numbers of cases further afield.

The rest of the world wanted to be sure that the virus would be contained to just these three countries, given that infected individuals can carry the virus with no symptoms.

From 2 21 days, travel was a major concern.

Most airlines suspended their flights, Emirates stopped flying, beginning Delta stop flying to Liberia, and the situation was most pronounced in Sierra Leone.

We're all airlines, except for Brussels airlines stop flying to the country's airports this lack of flights to the region made things difficult in terms of getting supplies and workers into the region.

In fact, Brussels Airlines is largely credited it with playing a crucial role in the fight against the epidemic for having not cancelled their flights.

The airline received praise from everyone up to the Obama administration.

They flew to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for the entirety of the crisis, carefully crafting schedules so that their staff would never have to spend an overnight in the Ebola stricken nations.

Passengers departing on these flights were all carefully screened.

To be sure they were not exhibiting symptoms as Belgium and the rest of the world certainly did not want the virus spreading to their countries.

And for the most part, this worked well.

A few isolated cases did appear in various countries worldwide, mostly from health workers returning home.

The epidemic was mostly contained.

Two Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Since the virus is containment was successful.

The next step WAAS eradication.

Once an individual, contracts Ebola, there was not a whole lot that could be done medically to stop the virus.

Treatment essentially involves assuring that an individual has the fluids and oxygen necessary for their Bonnie to stage the fight.

Therefore, the steps necessary to reach complete eradication of Ebola in West Africa were simple, but the implementation was tough.

Since Ebola is not contagious until symptoms arise, the key was to just isolate the infected as soon as symptoms arose.

The issue, though, was that all three of these countries do not have the infrastructure necessary to treat the thousands of cases that came in each month.

Not only that, but in many cases known Ebola medical facilities actually closed down in fear of the virus spreading to their staff, meaning that for unrelated health issues, people were not getting the treatment they needed.

All of the international organizations working in the region scramble to set up enough Ebola treatment centers.

These didn't mean to be fancy.

At the minimum, they could just be tense.

But they were crucial to make sure that the infected patients were not being turned away from treatment and sent back to their communities.

These organizations confronting the virus each other own solution on how to stop the epidemic, and this, of course led to disputes.

For example, the W H.

O held the position that the best way to rehydrate Ebola patients a crucial step given their diarrhea and vomiting was to administer fluids by ivy.

This theoretically is true.

It is more effective to rehydrate a patient by ivy.

But MSF, meanwhile, took a more pragmatic view, saying that in the conditions, the most effective route was to have patients drink rehydration solution.

You see medical staff confined to thick protective clothing could only work for about an hour at a time in the West African heat.

Therefore, there was almost always a shortage of medically qualified staff, and according to the MSF stance, there just weren't enough resources to set up and monitor all the patients Ivy's so in the end they were actually getting less fluids.

Overall, all the different organizations working in the region.

It took their own stance on this debate as nobody could reach a conclusion on theory versus pragmatism and given the variety of external variables.

Retrospective studies today cannot even confidently conclude who was right by October 2014.

Bed capacity exceeded demand, and so for the most part, there was no longer an issue of turning patients away.

The other main concern in terms of containing the virus was the proper handling of the deceased.

As even after death, the virus can spread.

Cremation would have been by far the safest option.

But in the cultures of most of the affected places, this method of handling the dead is quite taboo.

Liberia briefly required the cremation of victims much of the disdain of its citizens.

But elsewhere, specialized teams assured the safe burial of the infected, a practice going against the culture of extensive ceremonial burials in the region.

But at this point in October 2014 nobody really knew whether they were at the beginning, middle or end of the epidemic.

Nobody could be really sure how effective the efforts had been.

A nest of it made by the American CDC at this point estimated the worst case scenario as 1.4 million infected by January 2015 October 2014 with 6987 cases of Ebola, was a by far the worst month of the epidemic.

Mercifully, though, the worst case scenario did not come true.

Month by month, cases dropped as patient isolation, community engagement and safe burial proved effective.

On May 9th, 2015 barely a year after the epidemic started.

It's exponential growth.

The World Health Organization published its momentous message.

The Ebola outbreak in Liberia is over.

More than a month had passed since the last confirmed case, meaning further transmission.

Waas improbable.

That same message came soon after for Guinea and Sierra Leone and by the new year, 2016 Ebola Waas.

Aside from a few small future flare ups eradicated in West Africa quite soon after, the statistics came in 28,652 infected, and 11,325 dead in what was the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

Unfortunately, though, history is now repeating itself.

On July 17th 2019 the director general of the World Health Organization announced that he had declared the ongoing Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a public health emergency of international concern.

The same highest level of W H O emergency declared for the West African epidemic five years ago.

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