page_title: Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone
section_title: Spring 2014: Early cases
hierarchical_section_title: Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone / 2014 Outbreak started / Spring 2014: Early cases
caption_attribution_description: English: The reported weekly cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone as listed on Wikipedia [:en:Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa], some values are interpolated.
context_page_description: An Ebola virus epidemic in Sierra Leone occurred in 2014, along with the neighbouring countries of Guinea and Liberia. On March 18, 2014 Guinean health officials announce the outbreak of a mysterious hemorrhagic fever "which strikes like lightning." It was identified as Ebola virus disease and spread to Sierra Leone by May 2014. The disease is thought to have originated when a child in a bat-hunting family contracted the disease in Guinea in December 2013. Consumption of African bushmeat, including rats, bats, and monkeys, is commonplace in Sierra Leone and West Africa in general.
  At the time it was discovered, it was thought that Ebola virus is not endemic to Sierra Leone or to the West Africa region and this epidemic represents the first time the virus has been discovered there. However, some samples taken for Lassa fever testing turned out to be Ebola virus disease when re-tested for Ebola in 2014, showing that Ebola had been in Sierra Leone as early as 2006.
context_section_description: The epidemic is thought to have started in late May, when 14 people returned from a funeral of a traditional healer, who had been trying to cure others with Ebola in Guinea.
  The first person reported infected was a tribal healer. She had treated an infected person(s) and died on 26 May. According to tribal tradition, her body was washed for burial and this appears to have led to infections in women from neighboring towns.
  The corpses were highly contagious immediately after death, so precautions such as hazmat suits were needed. In this region the practice of kissing and touching the dead was implicated in helping to spread Ebola. However, two U.S. doctors who "followed all CDC and WHO protocols to the letter" still managed to contract the disease and it is not clear how they got the disease.
  By  27 May 2014, it was reported 5 people died from the Ebola virus and there were 16 new cases of the disease. Between 27 May 2014 and 30 May the number of confirmed, probable, or suspected cases of Ebola went from 16 to 50. By 9 June, the number of cases had risen to 42 known and 113 being tested, with a total of 16 known to have died from the disease by that time.
  The disease spread rapidly in the area, and the local government hospital was overwhelmed. At that hospital 12 nurses died despite having the world's only Lassa fever isolation ward, according to the U.N. The hospital proved instrumental early on, detecting the first case in the country and supporting the release of a research paper on Ebola. However, the growing number of cases there led to infection and loss of Sierra Leone's hemorrhagic fever expert, Doctor Khan, and the normal functioning of the hospital was disrupted because of the danger of getting infected by the disease.
caption: The reported weekly cases of Ebola in Sierra Leone as listed on Wikipedia's 2014 Ebola Virus in West Africa timeline of reported cases and deaths; some values are interpolated.
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