ABSTRACT
Since the discovery of the Ebola virus near the Ebola River in Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1976, the global community has been fascinated and horrified by the deadliness of the virus. For almost 40 years, specialists around the world have investigated the function and transmission of the Ebola virus, rushing to the location of each sporadic outbreak to glean more information. The Ebola virus has been costly in both medical resources and human lives, with fatality rates climbing as high as 90% at peaks of past outbreaks (World Health Organization 2004). Despite efforts to combat the virus, outbreaks of Ebola in Africa have emerged and spread rapidly, raising concerns regarding implications of this infectious disease in our increasingly interconnected world. The virus has potential to cause many fatalities near the epicentre of the outbreak and across political boundaries. Despite advances in medicine, Ebola has yet to be eradicated, and each new outbreak strikes harder than the previous.
