With the strain in Africa, what you're getting are child-contact exposures (dirty diapers, spit up, vomit, etc.), elderly-contact exposures (again, loss of control with bodily functions, or required medical aid involving blood or other fluids), and funerary-contact exposures (close contact with the deceased, no embalming, then touch-by-touch spreading due to crying, sweating, hugging someone with snot or spit on their person or clothes, etc.
Then there's the clinical situation. Few, if any, sterile facilities. Lack of supplies. No gloves or clothing/shoe covers. Few masks. Large numbers of people jammed into small spaces that can't accommodate them all, and a serious lack of information / education.
You're in a region of the world where superstition and tradition can often supersede medical care. One of the most popular folk cures for communicable diseases like measles and chicken pox is to shut the symptomatic child in a room for a week before seeking medical care, which increases the chances of the child dying. The same kind of thing is happening with the Ebola outbreak.
The one clinic that was able to get supplies was raided by armed men within days. The raiders not only took the supplies and medicines, but they forced the patients from the clinic and told them all to go home because they all merely had malaria and that ebola was a hoax. Then they stole the bedding - almost certainly infected bedding - and took it home with them. Again, the disease spreads.
Now compare that to a hospital in the US with established quarantine procedures. There are isolation rooms with one-way ventilation as a double-precaution against possible airborne mutation. Plenty of supplies. Sterile conditions. The doctors can keep fluids in the patient and treat his fever, which is the real killer.
Even untreated Ebola's mortality rate isn't 100% It's not even 80%. If I remember correctly from an old school project, it's in the 50%-60% range - and that's in open air, without medication or professional care of any kind. With care, the rate drops rapidly.
At this point, it's mainly a matter of tracking down his points of contact, watching them for about a month, and monitoring his health to make sure the fever doesn't get out of control.
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