Ebola: How the Guardian reported the outbreak of the disease in 1976

Liberian nurses carry the body of an Ebola victim on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia, 6 August 2014. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA

In 1976, a team at a lab in Antwerp discovered Ebola after a blood sample from a Belgian nun who had fallen mysteriously ill in Zaire was given to Peter Piot, one of the researchers.

Reports of a ‘mystery epidemic’ in Sudan that was causing many deaths began to appear on the pages of the Guardian from 1 October 1976.

The Guardian, 1 October 1976. Click to read full article.

A week later health officials at Heathrow airport had been alerted to check on travellers from Sudan and Zaire. The World Health Organisation (WHO) admitted that it was having difficulty identifying the virus, although on the 14 October it claimed it was the Marburg virus disease.

The Guardian, 15 October 1976. Click to read full article.

By 23 October unofficial reports were putting the death toll in Zaire at anything up to 800. WHO announced that it had identified a new type of hepatitis unrelated to the A and B strains currently known.

The Guardian, 23 October 1976. Click to read full article.

By the end of the month it was reported that the mysterious green monkey disease had disappeared.

The Guardian, 30 October 1976

However, in mid-November there was a fear that workers at the Ministry of Defence biological research establishment at Porton Down may have contracted the disease.

The Guardian, 13 November 1976. Click to read full article.