‘Ebola will return’, veteran scientist warns

Congolese expert Jean-Jacques Muyembe may be little known to the public, but he has been one of the world’s top Ebola investigators since the first epidemic erupted in central Africa in 1976. Now, amid a decline in a west African outbreak that has taken more than 11,000 lives, Muyembe warns that Ebola will strike again in the future and that the deadly virus poses “a threat to the whole world”.

They said many people were dying, and the health ministry asked me to go investigate.

Congolese expert Jean-Jacques Muyembe

Muyembe studied medicine in Kinshasa and at the University of Leuven in Belgium. He returned home to the Democratic Republic of Congo – then known as Zaire – in 1976, when the northern village of Yambuku was struck by a mysterious disease. Muyembe’s discovery that the virus is transmitted through bodily fluids was a key find. Even after decades fighting the deadly virus, Muyembe said he was “surprised” by the sheer size of the resurgence in Guinea in late 2013.

Health Ebola