West Africa witnessed one of the worst Ebola outbreaks ever in 2014. The virus deeply affected communities in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Public were informed about the outbreak in Guinea in March 2014, and by December 2014, the virus infected more than 17,000 people and killed 6,000.
In 2015, Ervebo, an experiential vaccine for Ebola was tested among volunteers and showed promising results. In December 2016, a study published in The Lancet revealed that the experiential vaccine proved to be 100% effective against Ebola. In 2019, Merck, the company that created the Ervebo vaccine, received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
The Ebola virus was relatively unknown in West Africa, so it infected and killed people for months before being identified. It was the first Ebola outbreak to spread unchecked through urban areas — the capital cities of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The outbreak was traced back to a 2-year-old child infected in Guinea in December 2013, three months before the outbreak was declared.
The infection spread rapidly where infected people were cared for at home or died at home and their bodies were washed and prepared for burial by family members, according to tradition.
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