As the Ebola Virus entered the US and spread through the media, the HHS Anatomy and Physiology class created a learning opportunity from the current events.

“The Ebola Project gave [our class] a connection to the real world,” said Jack Madden, senior, student in Anatomy and Physiology class. “In a usual project, you never really know when you’re going to use the information you’re taught. This was something to anchor [what we’re taught] into the real world and give it meaning.”

In the Ebola Containment Plan, students discussed a plan to contain Ebola if it ever came to Minnesota. Afterwards, they would find a correct way to facilitate a cure.

“[In my plan] I made sure people took the initial measures for if they experienced any of the symptoms like pain and nausea, and possibly quarantine if the virus was to spread widely,” said Madden.

The students doing the project learn the typical measures taken for Ebola containment. Patients check in with a doctor at a hospital until symptoms start to vanish, then wait in a 21-day quarantine period until the virus is cleared of all symptoms.

In her Ebola Project, Margarita Lyadova, senior and Anatomy and Physiology student, included measures to stop the source of Ebola, cutting off all air travel to the infected countries.

“The reason for the cases in America was because of somebody’s travels. I don’t think it’s fair that somebody’s travels [to infected African countries] cause harm, so I said that all this travel should be stopped,” Lyadova said.

Thomas Eric Duncan, the first man to die on US soil of Ebola, a partial inspiration for the Ebola Project.

According to Topsy, a Twitter analytics search, between Oct 3 and the Oct 8, Duncan’s story had been covered by 10,750 different American news outlets. The word “Ebola” appeared in 16,013,573 different tweets, and “#Ebola” appeared in 2,870,670 tweets.

“[Ebola] is a terrifying thing. It’s reasonable how much coverage it gets,” said Emma Conrad, junior. “But it’s also being exploited by a lot of people inside and outside of media.”

Madden agreed with this statement.

“[Ebola] is a fear that’s being blown out of proportion, and it is a very manageable thing,” said Madden. “The biggest way to fix this is to have self awareness on the subject. That’s a way to stop the panic and exploitation.”

Before March 23, the day the initial Ebola outbreak happened in West Africa, Ebola didn’t appeared in a newspaper for a year. The peak of news concerning Ebola didn’t appear in America until 3,000 people had already died and Thomas Eric Duncan contracted the disease. According to TIME magazine, Ebola rose to the top three health concerns for Americans.

Studies at Harvard University by Marge Dwyer, media relations manager at Harvard’s public health department, show that 26 percent of people are afraid that an immediate relative will catch this disease, and 37 percent of those percents are admittedly uneducated on the subject and did not graduate from high school.

“Stories that appear in America provide a personal connection to Americans,” said Conrad. “Instead of saying ‘this person had Ebola and died,’ say, ‘this person was a father and they died’. Make it more personal to the victims and don’t just cover it, and people will listen.”