UPSC Prelims 2015 · Question 17 of 98
UPSC Prelims 2015 question on Ebola Outbreak Countries
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2015
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectScience and Technology
- TopicDiseases
- DifficultyEasy
- TypeDirect
Among the following, which were frequently mentioned in the news for the outbreak of Ebola virus recently?
Show answer
Answer: B. Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia
Verdict
The answer is Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The major Ebola outbreak was centred on these three West African countries.
Analysis
The 2014 epidemic spread through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, which share borders in West Africa, and it drew sustained international attention because of the scale of transmission. The remaining options group countries from entirely different regions: Syria and Jordan are in West Asia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea are in South-East Asia and the Pacific, and Jamaica, Haiti and Surinam are in the Caribbean and northern South America. None of these regions saw an Ebola outbreak.
Source
The Hindu report on international concern over Ebola virus disease.
How to crack it
The examiner's own note is the lesson here: the other three options each cluster countries from a single non African region, so the option set can be sorted by geography before disease knowledge is applied. Ebola is historically an African disease, which makes the West African trio the only candidate. When a news question offers four regionally coherent groups, identify the region the phenomenon belongs to and the answer usually follows without recalling the outbreak details.
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