How was it contained?

By educating West Africans on how Ebola is transmitted, and by aggressive efforts to isolate and treat the infected. When the outbreak began 16 months ago, health care workers in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone were initially fighting blind. Doctors and nurses had to learn from scratch how to treat Ebola — the odds of survival dramatically increase with early, effective symptom management — and how to contain it. Helped by more than 10,000 volunteers from around the world, health workers gradually taught people to avoid unnecessary physical contact, to go to a clinic the moment they displayed symptoms, and to forgo the traditional ritual of washing corpses — a practice that accelerated the spread of the disease. “The best way to fight Ebola,” says Joseph Boye Cooper, a volunteer worker in Liberia, “is to prevent it.”