officers during the Ebola outbreak of 1976 The people of north-central Zaire were most heavily affected by this specific
epidemic. This area is located within the
Bumba Zone in the
Equator Region, which consists mostly of
tropical rainforests in the
biome. In 1976, there were approximately 275,000 people in the entire Bumba Zone, including 35,000 Zaireans. 75% of Zaire's population lived in forest villages at that time. Estimates suggest that each of the forest villages had a population of less than 5,000 people; the smallest villages had less than 500 inhabitants. Many of these villages bordered the
Zaire River. The river runs along the border on the south side of the country, which was important in the context of the Ebola epidemic because it separated the areas geographically. This was considered a possible cause of the epidemic for some time; however, it probably was not. Because the cause of the outbreak was initially unknown, many people with Ebola virus disease were misdiagnosed and/or treated for
malaria,
yellow fever, and
typhoid fever. Lokela had toured with a Yambuku mission in August 1976 near the
Central African Republic border and along the Ebola River. Initially, Lokela was diagnosed with
malaria at the Yambuku Mission Hospital and was given
quinine. However, Lokela returned to the mission hospital on 1 September with a high fever. On 28 August, another man presented symptoms, claiming he was from the nearby village of Yandongi.
Peter Piot, a microbiologist and physician who investigated the ensuing epidemic, concluded that it was inadvertently caused by the Sisters of Yambuku Mission Hospital, who had given unnecessary vitamin injections to pregnant women in their prenatal clinic without sterilizing the needles and syringes. There were five total syringes and needles that were being used by this nursing staff for multiple days. These medical materials were rinsed between uses with the use of only warm water. Then, at the end of their shift, the nurses would boil the needles and syringes in water, and no other sterilization methods were utilized. This was not an effective enough sterilization process as the Ebola virus was able to be spread from an initial unidentified infected person and spread through this hospital. The International Commission team was able to back up this theory by their epidemiological study showing a correlation between injection history and Ebola cases and then consequently the spreading through person to person. In all, 318 cases of Ebola were identified in Zaire, and 280 resulted in death. An additional 284 cases and 151 deaths occurred in nearby
South Sudan in an unrelated outbreak. Yambuku Mission Hospital was closed after 11 of its 17 staff members died.
Belgian nuns serving the community were also infected, and two of them died, along with
Mayinga N'Seka, a Zairean nurse, after the group was transported to Kinshasa. With assistance from the WHO, the outbreak was eventually contained by
quarantining local villagers in their communities, sterilizing medical equipment, and providing protective clothing to medical personnel. The small
Zairian Air Force provided helicopters to allow the outbreak team to visit 550 villages in the area. Cases were documented in 55 of the 550 villages surveyed. The majority of cases were detected in the first four weeks of September, and the last detected probable case died on 5 November 1976. The table below summarizes the eleven outbreaks that have occurred in the DRC since 1976: ==See also==