Lancet Respir Med. 2015 Feb;3(2):100-2. doi: 10.1016/S2213-2600(14)70316-9. Epub 2015 Jan 13.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in the Shadow of Ebola

Zumla A, S Perlman, SJN McNabb, AT Shaikh, DL Heymann, B McCloskey, and DS Hui

Ebola virus disease was first discovered in 1976 in Zaire¹ as a new lethal zoonotic disease affecting human beings. For 38 years, Ebola was restricted to localised outbreaks in a few remote regions of central Africa where it was brought under control rapidly, without attracting global attention.² The first cases of the ongoing Ebola epidemic—which is the largest outbreak so far—occurred in December, 2013, in Guinea, west Africa.³ Complacency and inaction by national governments and international organisations, even after calls for support from non-governmental organisations such as Medécins sans Frontières, combined with poor health-care systems and infrastructures, led to a rapid increase in the number of cases of the disease, which spread rapidly into neighbouring Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.

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HTTP://WWW.NCBI.NLM.NIH.GOV/PUBMED/?TERM=MIDDLE+EAST+RESPIRATORY+SYNDROME+IN+THE+SHADOW+OF+EBOLA