The largest Ebola outbreak in history is taking more women than men. Research shows women account for more than half of all reported Ebola deaths.
In Liberia alone, 75 percent of Ebola deaths were women according to The New Dawn.
Like many countries around the world, women are considered caregivers. Women account for a lot of nursing jobs, and they are the mothers that take care of the ill at home.
Caretakers often contract the illness because the disease is spread through bodily fluids.
"If a man is sick, the woman can easily bathe him but the man cannot do so," Marpue Spear, executive director of the Women's NGO Secretariat of Liberia, tells Foreign Policy. "Traditionally, women will take care of the men as compared to them taking care of the women."
Diseases often affect one gender more than another. When dengue fever was an epidemic the death toll consisted of mostly men; during the E. coli outbreak it was mostly women, Foreign Policy reports.
So far, there were over 3,000 reported Ebola-related deaths in the in West Africa since this outbreak, according to the World Health Organization.
