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An American nurse stands fully dressed in personal protective equipment during a training class on Oct. 20, 2014, at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. The virus ravaging West Africa has spread to American soil and put domestic health care workers on high alert.
A Guinean toddler who died on Dec. 6, 2013, is believed to be "Patient Zero" in the ongoing Ebola outbreak that has killed nearly 5,000 people and touched down in seven different countries.
But Ebola is far from a new disease. It was first identified nearly four decades ago, during a 1976 outbreak in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That 1976 strain of Ebola is the same one now associated with the most deadly Ebola outbreak in medical history. Ebola has killed more people since 2013 than had been diagnosed in all previous outbreaks combined since 1976.
In 1995, 250 people from the Democratic Republic of Congo died in the most deadly Ebola outbreak on record before the current epidemic. Previous outbreaks saw infections primarily isolated within the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Uganda and Gabon. Seldom did the virus to cross international borders, according to the CDC.
But now the U.S., Spain, Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have seen domestic Ebola patients. U.S. News has tracked the virus, from its first appearance in a small Guinean village to its arrival on American soil. Use the timeline below to follow the virus and get the latest updates on the deadly disease.
