Three years after the 2014 Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people, African countries are still struggling with the virus and its effects.
The virus is currently spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo in an area next to the Ebola River where the virus was first discovered in 1976.
Forty-one years on, there is still no cure, vaccines are still being developed, and people continue to die.
In 2014, a global and unprecedented outbreak set the world in a panic. The highly contagious virus spread from a young boy living in a small village in rural Guinea to across the region and beyond - killing 11,000 people.
Poorly equipped and understaffed, medical workers across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone turned down infected patients. When it reached the densely populated Liberian capital Monrovia, it took epic proportions.
Still, over 17,000 people contracted the virus and survived, but Ebola continues to haunt them.
Talk to Al Jazeera looks back at the 2014 crisis and meets those that have survived Ebola; men, women and children that played a crucial role in bringing the outbreak to an end.
Scientists call him "patient zero" - the first human to get Ebola in West Africa. For Etienne Oumouna, it's is Emile, his two-year-old son who used to love playing football.
Scientists suspect Emile got the virus by touching an Ebola-infected bat in the forest. Children in Guinea hunt and eat bats.
Emile passed Ebola to his mother, who passed it on to his sister, who passed it on to his grandmother and so on - until more than 29,000 people - mostly in West Africa - were infected.
The outbreak was out of control, and Margaret Chan, the former director-general of the World Heath Organization (WHO), called it "the largest and the most severe Ebola complexes ever seen in the nearly 40-year history of the disease."
Affected countries took drastic measures, including closing borders and using the military to impose quarantine over entire neighbourhoods.
The Liberian capital, Monrovia, was on the brink of widespread unrest and the government declared a state of emergency.
The scale of the epidemic was too much to handle for Doctors without Border, also known as MSF, who in the summer of 2014 considered pulling out of Liberia all together, seeing the danger for their staff and the epidemic spreading fast. So, for the first time in MSF's history, it called on the military to intervene and the United States sent 3,000 troops to affected countries.
It took another year and a half to get the outbreak under control - not before Ebola killed 11,000 people and infected 29,000 others.
Disco Hill is a site where thousands of Ebola victims have been laid to rest - a tribute to those who have fallen battling the virus.
CREDIT: ALJAZEERA
The virus is currently spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo in an area next to the Ebola River where the virus was first discovered in 1976.
Forty-one years on, there is still no cure, vaccines are still being developed, and people continue to die.
In 2014, a global and unprecedented outbreak set the world in a panic. The highly contagious virus spread from a young boy living in a small village in rural Guinea to across the region and beyond - killing 11,000 people.
Poorly equipped and understaffed, medical workers across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone turned down infected patients. When it reached the densely populated Liberian capital Monrovia, it took epic proportions.
Still, over 17,000 people contracted the virus and survived, but Ebola continues to haunt them.
Talk to Al Jazeera looks back at the 2014 crisis and meets those that have survived Ebola; men, women and children that played a crucial role in bringing the outbreak to an end.
'Patient zero' and the 2014 Ebola crisis
It all started in December 2013, deep in the forest of Guinea.Scientists call him "patient zero" - the first human to get Ebola in West Africa. For Etienne Oumouna, it's is Emile, his two-year-old son who used to love playing football.
Scientists suspect Emile got the virus by touching an Ebola-infected bat in the forest. Children in Guinea hunt and eat bats.
Emile passed Ebola to his mother, who passed it on to his sister, who passed it on to his grandmother and so on - until more than 29,000 people - mostly in West Africa - were infected.
The outbreak was out of control, and Margaret Chan, the former director-general of the World Heath Organization (WHO), called it "the largest and the most severe Ebola complexes ever seen in the nearly 40-year history of the disease."
Affected countries took drastic measures, including closing borders and using the military to impose quarantine over entire neighbourhoods.
The Liberian capital, Monrovia, was on the brink of widespread unrest and the government declared a state of emergency.
The scale of the epidemic was too much to handle for Doctors without Border, also known as MSF, who in the summer of 2014 considered pulling out of Liberia all together, seeing the danger for their staff and the epidemic spreading fast. So, for the first time in MSF's history, it called on the military to intervene and the United States sent 3,000 troops to affected countries.
It took another year and a half to get the outbreak under control - not before Ebola killed 11,000 people and infected 29,000 others.
'A dead body is more dangerous than one alive'
Now the MSF clinics have closed, the soldiers are gone, the dead are buried, and only the survivors remain.Disco Hill is a site where thousands of Ebola victims have been laid to rest - a tribute to those who have fallen battling the virus.
CREDIT: ALJAZEERA
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