EBOLA CO-DISCOVERER VISITS THE REGION WHERE THE FIRST KNOWN OUTBREAK TOOK PLACE IN 1976

Dr. Pete Piot, a director with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and co-discoverer of Ebola virus visited Yambuku in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the region first known for the outbreak of Ebola in 1976. Ebola is said to have killed 300 people then.
Dr. Piot says Yambuku has not changed since then. Bumba city, 2 hours from Yambuku still has no electricity, running water. Women and girls still go down to the river to fetch water in jugs. There are no cars. From Bumba to Yambuku they saw only three trucks.
When Ebola first struck the region it took a toll on the regions already weak institutions. There was only one hospital in Yambuku.
Ten years later, the conditions of the hospitals at Yambuku are worse than they were.
Years of civil war, poor governance and string of disease outbreaks have left the people with no jobs. Many now depend on subsistence farming and foraging in the forest for meat.
It was a very decrepit place he saw.