The current ebola epidemic is the worst ever and it’s spreading
West Africans are experiencing the largest and widest-ranging ebola virus outbreak recorded
By Adrianne Jeffries
TheVerge.com
June 24, 2014
The largest outbreak of ebola ever recorded is spreading in West Africa, and it’s unlikely to end soon. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organization — which are constantly ticking up as new cases are detected — 528 people have been infected with the virus and 337 have died. That’s already much worse than the previous largest outbreak, when 426 people were infected and 172 died in Uganda in 2000.
But this latest outbreak isn’t just infecting and killing more people — it’s also much more geographically spread out. Cases have been recorded in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Some victims turned up in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, and in a town 40 miles from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, which is worrisome because diseases spread more quickly in densely-populated areas.
Aid organizations are setting up emergency clinics and employing hundreds of international and local health workers. “The epidemic is out of control,” Dr. Bart Janssens, director of operations at Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement yesterday.
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