Our cover this month shows the burial of a victim of Ebola-Akera Beatrice, who was 38 when she died-in the small village of Gulu in northern Uganda. Beatrice died during the 2000 Ebola outbreak that affected three districts in Uganda and lasted from August 2000 to January 2001. This haunting photo is one of many taken by Seamus Murphy during the 2000 outbreak (see his photo-essay on Ebola at http://seamusmurphy.com/#/stories?ebola). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that outbreak resulted in 425 presumptive cases of Ebola and 224 deaths.

Figure. Our cover this month shows the burial of a victim of Ebola-Akera Beatrice, who was 38 when she died-in the small village of Gulu in northern Uganda.

This is in stark contrast to the severity of the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the worst and most widespread to date. At the time of this writing, the current epidemic has stricken over 10,000 people, causing nearly 5,000 deaths. For the first time, it has also spread to Europe and the United States. Among the reasons for the severity of this outbreak, according to a July 31 article in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, are that it began along the shared border of three of the world's poorest countries-Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea; the health care systems of these countries lacked the manpower or equipment to quickly respond to such a threat; and frequent travel between these countries made tracking the virus more difficult.

Given the current ease of travel between West Africa and the United States, and with cases of Ebola now appearing here too, it is more important than ever for nurses and other health care workers to ask patients about their travel history. For more on Ebola, see this month's Editorial. To learn how one hospital successfully implemented protocols to prevent nurses' exposure to the disease, see In the News. You can also find up-to-date coverage on Ebola on our blog, Off the Charts.-Michael Fergenson, senior editorial coordinator