Patient Zero in the latest Ebola outbreak in western Africa is reported to be a 2-year-old boy who died last December in Guinea in a village that borders Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to The New York Times. The location also explains the spread to the affected countries.

One week later, the boy's grandmother, mother and sister also died from the disease, but because it is an unknown disease to the western region of Africa, no one knew what had killed them.

Some of the mourners at the family members' funeral caught the virus and spread it, as well as health workers who were the first to be infected and killed from the disease. The spread of the virus has claimed almost 1,000 lives in the four affected nations (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria), according to NBC.

The Liberian president, who declared a state of emergency in her country late last week, spoke to her countrymen in the region of Monrovia Saturday to pledge funds to fight the outbreak.

"If we haven't done enough so far, I have come to apologize to you," President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said.

She spoke to health care workers in Monrovia and pledged $18 million from the government to aid the efforts to stop the spread and treat those affected. More than 30 workers and three doctors have died from the disease in Liberia.

The World Health Organization deemed the outbreak an international public health emergency and said the world needs to unify to aid the outbreak control efforts Friday.

The U.S. began its efforts last week when the Food and Drug Administration approved clinical trials for an experimental vaccine and green-lit an experimental drug that had been used successfully -- on two Americans, a health worker and a doctor -- who had been infected while working in west Africa.

The outbreak will likely take months to control, international health officials have said.