Age Structure of Ebola Outbreaks

Topic

Resource Type

Level

High School — General High School — AP/IB College

Used In

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Description

This activity guides the analysis of a published scientific figure from a study that investigated demographic patterns in Ebola outbreaks from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Between 1975 and 2014, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) experienced seven outbreaks of Ebola virus disease. In this study, scientists analyzed the demographics, including sex and age, of the individuals who had contracted Ebola during these outbreaks. The figure compares the sex and age distributions for 996 suspected, probable, or confirmed Ebola cases (purple bars) to those of the overall DRC population (orange bars).

The “Educator Materials” document includes a captioned figure, background information, graph interpretation, and discussion questions. The “Student Handout” includes a captioned figure and background information.

The “Resource Google Folder” link directs to a Google Drive folder of resource documents in the Google Docs format. Not all downloadable documents for the resource may be available in this format. The Google Drive folder is set as “View Only”; to save a copy of a document in this folder to your Google Drive, open that document, then select File → “Make a copy.” These documents can be copied, modified, and distributed online following the Terms of Use listed in the “Details” section below, including crediting BioInteractive.

Student Learning Targets

Analyze and interpret data from a scientific figure.
Identify and compare demographic characteristics using age structure diagrams (population pyramids).

Estimated Time

Within one 50-minute class period.

Key Terms

demographic structure, demography, epidemiology, population diagram, population pyramid, virus, zoonotic disease

Primary Literature

Rosello, Alicia, Mathias Mossoko, Stefan Flasche, Albert Jan Van Hoek, Placide Mbala, Anton Camacho, Sebastian Funk, et al. “Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1976-2014.” eLife 4 (2015). https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.09015.

Terms of Use

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