(WASHINGTONPOST) — Exactly one year ago, on March 23, 2014, the World Health Organization announced that there was an Ebola outbreak in Guinea. There were 49 cases and 29 deaths from the disease then. More than 10,000 people have since died of Ebola in West Africa, according to the WHO.
Although the disease’s spread exploded and then slowed over the course of the past year — and its grasp on Western attention has waxed and waned — it is clear that the deadly virus is not done with West Africa.
But Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the head of the United Nations’ Ebola mission, believes the outbreak could be “gone” by the end of August. He told the BBC that the U.N.’s initial efforts to fight the outbreak were slowed by a combination of “arrogance” and a “lack of knowledge,” but that the international organization had “learn[ed] lessons” from that.
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