Question: how many people ( roughly ) have died this year because of Ebola?

Verity Hill answered on 5 Nov 2018:

With Ebola, we only see outbreaks, so there aren’t people suffering from it all the time like with other diseases. Instead, every so often it jumps into humans from an animal (probably fruit bats) and causes an outbreak.

This year there have been two Ebola outbreaks, both in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (in central Africa)

In the first one, there were 54 cases reported, and 33 of those people died.
A week after that outbreak was declared over, more cases were discovered across the country, and this outbreak is still ongoing. There have been 298 cases reported, with 151 of those dying. So in total 184 people have died this year from Ebola.

It’s very likely that these numbers are lower than they should be – it’s usually difficult to find everyone that has an illness like Ebola because the defining early symptoms are the same as lots of other diseases in the area, like malaria. Also, people don’t trust the government or international health teams, so do not want to give beloved family members to strangers.

However, it is still much much lower than many other diseases! For context, malaria kills about 500,000 people every year. But Ebola is very scary, and it leads to things like school closures, putting off elections, banning public gatherings, so it is not just direct deaths that we have to worry about.