Kat Ley

I think it's a sign of how seriously people are taking this outbreak.

So Ebola is a disease that can be caused by six different types of ortho-Ebola viruses.

And they cause symptoms that in the first case, they don't seem that different from another cold or a flu.

You know, you've got your aches, pains, shivers.

And then they progress and you get what's called the wet symptoms.

So you get vomiting, diarrhea, deadly bleeding.

It is.

I mean, Ebola viruses can cause fatality rates of up to 80, 90 percent.

But it is much less transmissible than COVID or flu.

I think for the Bundibugyo variant, which is what we're talking about in the DRC, previous outbreaks, you've seen death rates of between 30 to 50 percent.

So it's quite scary.

And how is it spread?

How do people catch it?

It spreads through contacts with bodily fluids.

So someone caring for an Ebola patient might come into contact with their vomit or their blood.

In previous outbreaks, we've seen that funerals are quite a common place for Ebola to spread.

And that's because people are interacting with the body, preparing it for burial.

more than 28,000 people were affected and more than 11,000 died.

It spread across multiple countries.

And I'm sure you remember this huge international response where you had teams flying in, setting up temporary hospitals.