The World Health Organization (WHO) declared on Dec 29 that Guinea was Ebola—free, which means the Ebola outbreak has officially ended in West Africa.
"The fatal disease broke out in Guinea in December 2013, and then spread to neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia," salon. com writer Ben Norton wrote. "A handful of Ebola cases were subsequently reported in Nigeria, Mali, the US and some European countries, yet were all contained.
The WHO declared the end of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in November, just after Liberia was declared Ebola - free in September. However, Liberia has had new cases since the declaration, reported the BBC.
The disease killed more than 2,500 people in Guinea, and a further 9,000 in Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is the largest Ebola epidemic (流行病) in history, according to the WHO.
Children were especially vulnerable (脆弱的) to the disease. During the outbreak, more than 22,000 kids lost one or both parents in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to UNICEF. In Guinea alone, 6,220 children lost a parent or both, and 519 more were killed.
A salon. com article says when a few cases of Ebola were found in the US, the media went hysterical (歇斯底里的) , But since the disease was contained in the West Africa in 2014, Western governments and media outlets have devoted little attention to it.
"This reaction", says the article, has "led critics and activists to accuse the Western media of prejudice and racism. When white people were threatened by the disease, there was more concern and interest. When they were no longer threatened, there was silence."
