Zaire outbreakSoon after Lokela's d

Zaire outbreak
Soon after Lokela's death, others who had been in contact with him also died, and people in the village of Yambuku began to panic. This led the country's Minister of Health along with Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko to declare the entire region, including Yambuku and the country's capital, Kinshasa, a quarantine zone. No one was permitted to enter or leave the area, with roads, waterways, and airfields placed under martial law. Schools, businesses and social organizations were closed. Researchers from the CDC, including Peter Piot, co-discoverer of Ebola, later arrived to assess the effects of the outbreak, observing that "the whole region was in panic." The outbreak lasted 26 days, with the quarantine lasting 2 weeks. Among the reasons that researchers speculated caused the disease to disappear, were the precautions taken by locals, the quarantine of the area, and possibly most important, the discontinuance of reusing needles by local nurses.