Introduction to the Special Section on Ebola: reflections from the field

In 2013, journalists began to write about the first Ebola patients inWest Africa. Now, in 2015, we are at almost twenty thousand cases of people who are suspected of, or actually are, infected and many thousands of deaths further, mainly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. These countries, as well as the international community, not only face the loss of all those people, but also the tremendous
impact on family members, communities, aid workers and the societies as a whole.We read and hear heart breaking stories of dying patients in hospitals or just along the road, about people who could not holdtheir dying loved ones in their arms or comfort their childrenwhowere in pain, because they would touch the death. Many health workers risk their lives to help, and many have died.