Ebola in Northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

The problem we chose to address for our project is the major issue regarding transmission of Ebola Virus Disease through body fluids. This includes transmission through blood, feces, vomit, sexual contact, burial of infected bodies, and contact with surfaces contaminated with fluids. The reason we chose this specific problem is because we believe it has one of the most significant impacts on the well-being of at-risk communities. Transmission plays one of the largest roles in the perpetuation of this epidemic and it does not discriminate who it affects. This is an issue that poses a threat to all people of the population rather than just a specific group. We chose this problem because we believe it is one of the largest contributors to the spread of Ebola Disease. Coming up with a way to reduce transmission would lead to a great decrease in the amount of people contracting and dying from the disease, as well as decrease the risk of EVD spreading to other countries. It was important to our group that we chose to address an issue that was realistic for us to solve. Based on this piece of criteria, we determined transmission as a problem with the most realistic possibility of an engineering solution and concluded that addressing this problem would allow us a large range of possibilities in terms of approach.