title: Forty years of the war against Ebola.
abstract: Humans have been fighting against the Ebola virus disease (EVD) since its first outbreak in 1976 in southern Sudan and Yambuku in Zaire which lies on the Ebola River. According to the data from the World Health Organization (WHO, 2014b), the first outbreak claimed 431 lives in 1976, and the disease awoke transiently in Sudan three years later and then disappeared for 15 years afterwards. Following that, large outbreaks appeared in 1995 in Zaire with 250 deaths of people, 2001-2002 in Uganda with 224 deaths, 2002-2003 in Congo with 128 deaths, and 2007 in Congo with 187 deaths. In 2014, the most severe and complicated outbreak swept through the West African countries having already taken 1069 lives, with the situation seeming to be out of control. To date, there have been 15 outbreaks in Africa, which have caused 4362 infected cases and claimed 2659 lives. The pandemics of Ebola show obvious independence from any season. Humans are generally susceptible to the Ebola virus without gender or age variation. The natural reservoir of the Ebola virus still remains unclear. During the past 40 years or so, the EVD disappeared after an outbreak in one region and erupted in another region without any warning. The difficulty in understanding the spreading pattern of Ebola was compared to that of the wave-particle duality of light.
authors.affiliation: Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biomedicine, Tianjin 300457, China; Department of Biophysics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Hao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D046129:Ebola Vaccines / Q000302:isolation & purification; D029043:Ebolavirus / Q000145:classification / Q000472:pathogenicity / Q000502:physiology; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000266:history* / Q000628:therapy; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D058873:Pandemics / Q000266:history; D035583:Rare Diseases / Q000191:economics / Q000628:therapy; D011991:Receptors, Virus / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D046129:Ebola Vaccines; D011991:Receptors, Virus