In 1976, Sembo Ndobe, an expectant woman went to the maternity ward at the Yambuku Catholic Mission hospital. On top of labor pains, the woman was experiencing fever. The attendant nurse at the hospital thought the disease was normal. Therefore, she assisted her to deliver. However, during the delivery, the nurse discovered that the baby was dead and her placenta was hemorrhaged. A few days later, Ndobe was pronounced dead. Barely a week after Ndobe’s death, Sister Beata, the nurse who attended her, also contracted the same disease. Sister Beata was bleeding in every opening of her body. As well, she was pronounced dead in a short while.
Ebola re-emerged again in December 2013 in the village of Meliandou, Guinea, West Africa. A baby called Emile Ouamouno was playing around when her mother, Sia Dembadouno, was washing clothes. Unfortunately, Emile came into contact with a bat when young children set fire to smoke out bats from a hole in a tree. Emile contracted the disease and died a few days later. Subsequently, Emile’s mother and some members of their family also died. The disease spread from Meliandou to other places across West Africa. The epidemic was hard to manage due to hard situations in the Makona Triangle, a shape like a triangle bordering Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
The highly contagious disease claimed the lives of medical officers and ordinary people. Fear engulfed the region. Before long, the disease was spread across Europe and America. However, some people survived the deadly disease. To lessen the spread of the virus, people change their mode of behavior. West African people embraced the advice of medical doctors and researchers and the outbreak vanished.
