Learning From Disaster: Exploring the Ebola Epidemic

By Tom Marshall and Michael Gonchar

Burial Boys of Ebola

In Sierra Leone, a group of young men take on the dirtiest work of the Ebola outbreak: finding and burying the dead.

By Ben C. Solomon on August 23, 2014.

Updated, Oct. 30 |

Note: We have created two lessons on the Ebola epidemic: a) the one below to cover the ongoing outbreak in West Africa, and b) a separate lesson about preventing the spread of Ebola in the United States.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have been struggling since March to stop what has become the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded. The disease has killed thousands, and is causing widespread fear and disruption in West Africa.

How can teachers help students to understand a situation that is overwhelming even to the experts?

Below, quick ideas for teaching about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in one or two class periods, all grounded in The Times’s continuously-updated Ebola Q & A. Then, we offer two ideas for going further by writing point-of-view pieces and by undertaking additional research.

Note: The images and descriptions contained in the Ebola resources below may not be suitable for all ages. Teachers should use their discretion.

Related Article Source: USAID (areas affected as of Sept. 23)

Lesson Plan: If You Only Have One Class Period…

1. Start With What Students Already Know: Have students work alone or in pairs to jot down in a journal or on a graphic organizer like one of these concept maps what they have read or heard about Ebola. Then, create a class list on the board as they share. On one side of the board keep an additional list of questions students ask.

Ask Well | An Ebola Q. and A.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. answers reader questions about the Ebola virus.

By Donald G. McNeil Jr. and Ashley Maas on October 3, 2014.

2. Watch a Short Video: Then, watch one of the videos we have embedded in this post, including the one above, or any other Times video you can find on the outbreak.

One we recommend: this video, “Burial Boys of Ebola,” about a group of young men in Sierra Leone who have taken on the dirtiest work of the Ebola outbreak: finding and burying the dead. Teachers should preview the short film first to make sure it is appropriate for your students. After students watch the video, students can answer the following questions through writing and discussion:

  • Who are the “burial boys”?
  • What precautions do these young men take to make sure they don’t get sick?
  • Why are the people in the village angry at the “burial boys”?
  • Why is the job of burying the dead so important to controlling this outbreak?
  • Who trains and supports these young men with their jobs?
  • What are some of the obstacles the burial teams face in doing their jobs?
  • What sacrifices are these men making by taking this job?
  • Why do you think these young men do this difficult work?

3. Read and Answer Questions: Next, have students use The Times’s regularly updated page, Ebola Q. and A., which includes text as well as graphs, charts and maps, to answer the following basic questions about the Ebola outbreak. If you are short on time, students can work individually or in pairs to answer one or two questions, and then jigsaw or have the whole class share what they learned. Here are a selection of Q. and A. questions The Times has asked and answered:

  • Where are the most new cases being reported?
  • How many people have been infected in Africa?
  • How many health care workers have contracted Ebola?
  • How contagious is the virus?
  • Are there drugs to treat or prevent Ebola?
  • How does the disease progress?
  • Where is the outbreak?
  • How many people could become infected?
  • How does this compare to past outbreaks?
  • Where does the disease come from?

4. Discuss: After students have gained a better understanding of the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa, the class can discuss two larger questions:

Invite your students to post answers to the question How Should We React to the Ebola Epidemic? to our blog.

To go further, ask your students: What responsibility does the United States and the world community have to help these West African nations control the Ebola outbreak? Why?

To conclude the discussion, as either an exit ticket or homework assignment, have students respond to the same question in writing, using evidence from the lesson plan.

5. Go Further: Students can delve deeper into the Ebola outbreak in West Africa by writing a point-of-view piece or by undertaking additional research, both of which we explain in more detail below.

Why Ebola Patients Are Rejecting Care

Amid the deadliest Ebola virus outbreak in history, doctors are fighting the disease and also local populations’ fear of medical treatment.

By Carrie Halperin on July 27, 2014. Photo by Samuel Aranda for The New York Times.

Going Further Idea #1: Point-of-View Writing

It’s easy to miss the human stories amid the big numbers of the Ebola outbreak. But only by searching for individual perspectives can you gain a true appreciation for the challenges of surviving or containing such an epidemic.

Read the selections below, or any others you can find on the Ebola Times Topics page, listening for voices and perspectives that move or inspire you in some way. Then select one point of view (e.g., victims’ families or health care workers) and gather evidence using this graphic organizer (PDF) to document what people in this group think, see, feel and hear relating to the Ebola crisis.

Then, choose a written format to tell a piece of the story of the Ebola outbreak from the point of view of a person or people in this group. For example, you can write a diary entry, a letter, a poem, an obituary, a scientific report, a newspaper article or anything else you can think of.

For example, one student might choose to write a letter from someone in Liberia explaining to a friend in the United States what life was like during the lockdown. Another might choose to write as if he or she were a scientist issuing a report on the latest details of the epidemic’s spread in a particular region. Students may choose to weave in quotations and descriptions from the articles. Finally, invite the class to share their writing.

Here are some groups you can choose from:

The Victims and Their Families and Neighbors

A man with Ebola-like symptoms waited to be admitted at the Doctors Without Borders treatment center in Monrovia. Related Article Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

How does life change when your country is beset by a deadly epidemic? A lot depends on whether you come into direct contact with victims or live in an unaffected part of the country. But even for people who haven’t seen a victim, life feels different. Even manners — the ritual of a handshake or hug with friends — are transformed.

The Health Workers

Dr. Fallah is trying to beat Ebola in Monrovia, a city of 1.5 million people where the disease is expanding exponentially. Related Article Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

What kind of person risks infection to save others? In these stories you can hear what it’s like to work in an Ebola ward, see colleagues become infected and die — or occasionally survive.

The Reporters

How much of a risk should journalists take to report the facts to the outside world, and what do you learn when you report from the midst of a crisis? The New York Times reporter Adam Nossiter ventured right into a graveyard to discover the truth about Ebola deaths, and worried about getting the virus on his boots. After months in the affected zone, he worries that the outside world still doesn’t quite get it.

The Burial Workers

James Hamilton said of burying Ebola victims in Sierra Leone, “We will need much more space.” Related Article Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

Someone needs to bury the dead during an Ebola outbreak, or additional people will be affected. But the volunteers for this duty put themselves at terrible risk, and they are often ostracized by their communities and even relatives.

The Experts

What should be done and how worried should the rest of the world be? Even the scientists debate some of these questions.

Going Further Idea #2: Additional Research

Delays in the Fight Against Ebola

A shortage of adequate facilities in West Africa as well as doctors to staff them is hindering the fight against ebola.

By Carrie Halperin on September 16, 2014. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images.

For this activity, we take some of the questions from the Q. and A. above and suggest relevant resources for students to conduct additional research about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The resources from the point-of-view narrative activity above can also be useful in answering these questions as well.

1. How many people have been infected? Where is the outbreak? How big can the outbreak become?

2. What are the United States and other nations doing to help?

3. How contagious is the virus? How does the disease progress? How is the disease treated?

4. How does this compare to past outbreaks? How does Ebola compare with other infectious diseases in the news? Where does the disease come from?

Other Sources on the Ebola Outbreak

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Ebola

World Health Organization | Ebola Outbreak at Six Months

Doctors Without Borders | Voices from the Field: Struggling to Control the Ebola Outbreak

Standards

This resource may be used to address the academic standards listed below.

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Comments are no longer being accepted.

9 + 10 October 10, 2014 · 10:08 am

I think we should be acting crazy, because it is very dangerous very very dangerous. Everyone should move to Asia and learn Chinese and Japanese.

Jagur FWSMS October 14, 2014 · 3:40 pm

This article makes me sad? I kept saying as I watched the Ebola Epidemic destroy a African village. I wonder how many listed cases of ebola are there in the world.

HannahR October 14, 2014 · 9:01 pm

After reading this article I have discovered that Ebola is becoming a continues problem in the western section of Africa. On October Eight 14 Africans were diagnosed and killed by Ebola alone. Its coming to the united states as well!. Even a Liberian man was diagnosed with this contagious disease. Sadly he did not make it out of the hospital alive. There are ways that we can prevent people from getting Ebola as well. All you need to do is keep your hands clean and not touch any infectious body fluids belonging to another person.

Rachel FWSMS October 19, 2014 · 9:06 pm

What made me very upset was how the guy that helps with the bodies has no one, and his whole family disowned him, yes I understand that they think he will get the virus, but even if he does, wont that make his family want to see him more before he got the disease? Does this disease make people that scared of their loved ones? How tragic is that.
I think it is the right thing to do to bury the infected victims like they did with the woman in the video because it’s like a funeral and it will recognize them in their honor. Are their any studies showing cures or is there any possiblities? Maybe someone will find a cure soon.

Sarah January 6, 2015 · 7:08 pm

I think this is a very important topic not only for the obvious reasons, but because it is important to teach our children so that they may understand problems like this without just being fearful. I included some information, lesson plans and resources about viruses for this purpose in my blog post here: //www.shareitscience.com/2014/10/what-is-virus-anyway.html

bengal10Daniel181197 July 2, 2015 · 9:25 am

The fear for getting the Ebola virus in America died out just as the swine flu did. But sadly in western Africa Ebola is still a common virus. This virus is so common that young men around the age of 20, “Burial Boys”, have to travel village to village burying victims of the virus. But the villagers often don’t respect what these people are doing for them and are blinding by how deadly this virus was. Many times these villages would believe that this virus was a hoax and thought that the dead ones that were killed by the virus deserved a proper burial. But because Ebola was so dangerous and had to be treated with a lot of caution the Burial Boys would refuse.
This is horrifying to see so many people die from a very contagious virus with no hope for a treatment. This article is a year outdated and scientist are getting closer to finding a cure for Ebola. Two months after the Ebola virus got on the news it died out. The whole fear for this virus had decreased but the fear was still there. This could only mean one sign. This so called “deadly virus” could now have treatments to kill it. There hasn’t been any new positive or negative news on the progress for finding the cure but we are a lot closer than we were in the beginning. This progress may not show a lot but it does prove that these Burial Boys didn’t serve their country for no reason.

Liliko U. August 11, 2015 · 5:19 pm

Watching this video and seeing how the ebola virus is affecting communities in Africa brings to realization how serious this virus is. Hearing about it and reading articles on ebola and victims educates people on what the virus can do and the dangers of it. However, because many people outside of West Africa have never personally encountered any factor of ebola, the entire virus and it’s tragic aftermath seems very surreal; until watching this video.

After watching this video, you realize that when articles speak of countless people being killed by this virus on a daily routine, there is no exaggeration. There is no play of words. Until watching this, you don’t realize what it’s like to live in a community of fear, and a community where bodies will be lying dead on the ground because it was infected by ebola. These kind of surroundings are quite unimaginable for people who have very little, if not any experience with the virus.

I am both shocked and very proud of the work the Burial Boys commit. It’s amazing that at such a young age, these boys can make their own decision to sacrifice their health to manage the victims of the deadly virus. It is a great deed for them to do and it takes a lot of courage, commitment, and benevolence to do what these boys do.