Discovery and description of Ebola Zaire virus in 1976 and relevance to the West African epidemic during 2013-2016.

A first hand account of events as they occurred in Yambuku in 1976, including the causes and reasons for the spread of Ebola within the Yambuku Mission hospital, the probable index event/patient (not identified), and the extreme shortage of syringes and needles in this small village hospital. The paper also relates these details to the three-country (Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia) West African epidemic of 2013-2016.

Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this liink.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this paper and its interpretation.)