Professor Sharon Lewin

And the time of becoming unwell can be up to six weeks.

And people are roaming around.

You can just imagine the multiplier effect of this.

So any outbreak that has the potential for broader

pandemic spread is something that the world needs to care about.

And that is relevant for hantavirus, for Ebola, and also diphtheria because, you know, diphtheria is preventable through vaccination.

And of course, we're seeing declining rates of vaccination, including here in Australia as well.

We've known about Ebola since the 70s, and nearly all outbreaks have been in Central Africa, except for 2014, where we saw a large outbreak in West Africa.

Central Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo, are very familiar with Ebola.

However, these first cases happened in a remote area of the country.

And it was from a strain, Bundibugo, that wasn't picked up on the routine test for Ebola.

So there was a bit of time before people actually understood what was happening.

And when that happens, you get spread of the disease unchecked.

Added to that, it's in an area that's under significant conflict and therefore there isn't stable government to make big changes there.

It's spreading to other areas in other countries.

Added to that, we don't have a vaccine or a therapeutic for this strain of Ebola.

Just to put it in context, though, the outbreak in 2014, which was also in a difficult area, Western Africa, Sierra Leone and neighbouring countries that had fragile governments, you know, there was something like 14,000 people that were affected.

At the moment, the reported cases are 900.

It's probably bigger, but hasn't quite reached the scales that we saw in 2014.

Yeah, I think this is a good example as well of the intersection between science and socioeconomic factors that drive transmission of infectious diseases.