B Acad Nat Med Paris
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B Acad Nat Med Paris · Apr 2015
Review[The Emergence of Ebola virus in humans: a long process not yet fully understood].
Since 1976 Ebola virus regularly has caused small deadly outbreaks in Central Africa, usually controlled in a few months. For the first time, an Ebola epidemic of exceptional magnitude dramatically engulfed several countries in West Africa since December 2013. Major failures of implementing measures to prevent human-to-human transmissions are the main cause of this large-scale Ebola outbreak. ⋯ Thus, according to the diversity of concerned animals and their clinical infectionform, modalities of human contamination can be multiple and are still largely unknown. In this context, all efforts that could be made to unravel the mystery of the Ebola virus emergence in humans and clarify modalities of the virus transmission, would allow for predicting or for anticipating the future occurrence of epidemics. This review aims to provide an exhaustive inventory of the Ebola ecology to highlight events governing the virus transmission to humans that still remain unsolved.