Monthly New Cases and Deaths from Ebola in Western Africa

The Ebola Virus and it’s possible spread to the US and elsewhere through air travel was a major concern during the 2014 outbreak. The primary locus of the epidemic was in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) maintains a tally of the total number of cases of the disease in these three countries at their website. The Tepee graphics were obtained for the CDC data to illustrate how the Ebola epidemic flared and receded in these countries over the period from April 2014 to October 2015. A juxtaposition of the new cases and deaths data is in this document.

New Cases of Ebola in West Africa

The Table below provides the number of new Cases of Ebola in the three West African Countries inferred from the CDC data. The Tepee Graphic below the table provides an intuitive visualization of this data. The length of each horizontal line represents the row total – the total number of new cases in each month over the three countries. The segments of each horizontal line represents the total at each month in each of the countries as indicated by the colors in the legend. The number of cases in any month for any country can be read off from the length of the associated segment using the scale provided. The area of the colors are  proportional to the column totals – the total number of cases in each country.  The disease flared rapidly from April to October 2014 and it has taken about a year to contain it.

Ebola Deaths in West Africa

Data similar to that for the new cases can be derived from the CDC website for the deaths by country for each month. The data and the corresponding Tepee graphic is provided below. Interpretation is similar to that for the graphic for new cases.