The 2014 Outbreak

For decades, Ebola outbreaks were small and rural — the largest killed 280 people. Then in December 2013, a two-year-old boy named Emile Ouamouno in Meliandou, Guinea, became Patient Zero of what became the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

By the time the outbreak was contained in 2016, it had spread across three countries and overwhelmed every health system in its path. The international response was dangerously slow in the early months, allowing the virus to take hold in dense urban neighborhoods for the first time.