Posted on 08/02/2014 9:22:13 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Parts of Africa are in the throes of the deadliest outbreak of Ebola in recorded history
The latest outbreak of the Ebola virus in Africa is the deadliest in recorded history. It has killed at least 729 people since March and infected more than 1,000, including several Americans.
The grave situation prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue travel warnings on Thursday to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. They urged travelers to forgo all nonessential travel to those countries.
The World Health Organization (WHO) calls Ebola one of the world's most deadly diseases, but what exactly is it? And why is it spreading? Here's 10 things to know:
1. What is Ebola?
The Ebola virus disease is a severe, contagious illness that damages the vascular system, causing bleeding and high fevers. It has a high fatality rate: from 60 to 90 percent. The virus first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks, one in Sudan and one in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter occurred close to the Ebola River, which gave the disease its name.
Ebola is almost entirely confined to Africa. It usually appears in waves of outbreaks, partly because when someone contracts the virus, it spreads from person to person so fast that it's difficult to contain.
2. Why have we heard so much about this particular outbreak?
In March, Guinea received confirmation that Ebola was the illness responsible for an alarming number of deaths. The disease has since reached Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, making this the deadliest Ebola outbreak ever.
This outbreak is also worrying because of its geography. The regions affected today are in West Africa, but this strain of the virus is native to the forests of Central Africa. It is not yet known how the disease was carried from one region to the other.
Doctors Without Borders said the disease, which has been raging for months, is "totally out of control," and efforts to stop its spread have proved difficult.
3. Why is the disease reported only in Africa?
There are five strains of Ebola: Four are native to Africa, but one is actually native to the Philippines and China. The only place that the disease has been observed spreading from animals to humans is Africa.
The disease is generally spread to humans from animals native to specific regions of Africa, including primates, rats and bats. Contagion may occur from handling infected animals, ingesting infected meat from these animals, or contact with their bodily secretions. Ebola spreads especially quickly in some African countries due to misinformation. Some hunters eat infected "bushmeat." Some burial procedures encourage close contact between mourners and infected corpses.
Health professionals have had difficulty convincing people to follow strict isolation procedures that might help contain the spread of the virus.
4. Why is it so deadly?
The Ebola virus causes severe bleeding and organ failure. Initial symptoms include fever, weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. These symptoms are followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rashes, impaired kidney and liver function, and sometimes internal and external bleeding, according to WHO.
In short, the virus finds a way to rob the body of both blood and fluids, a particularly deadly combination. Other research showed that the virus may also suppress immune response. Death rates are also elevated by poor health care in the countries where Ebola has struck.
5. Why does it spread so fast?
Dr. Gary L. Simon of the George Washington University specializes in infectious diseases and tropical medicine. He said that the disease is not actually all that contagious -- but quarantine practices in certain African countries have been difficult to enforce.
When a person comes into contact with an infected person or animal, transmission occurs from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with blood or other bodily fluids like stool, urine, saliva, sweat and semen.
The disease is also difficult to detect in the early stages, as it shares symptoms with many other diseases. By the time the virus is detected, the infected person will be very sick and will likely have transmitted Ebola to other people.
6. Is there a cure?
There is no known cure. An experimental serum was provided Thursday to a U.S. charity worker in Liberia who is infected with the disease.
"Supportive therapy" to regulate a person's bodily temperature and blood pressure is the only treatment.
Dr. Jackie Eghari-Sabet, of the Family Allergy and Asthma Care in Maryland, compared the search for an Ebola cure to that of the search for an HIV cure. She said virologists have a lot of experience to work from.
7. When are people contagious?
People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. The incubation period (the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms) is two to 21 days. In one case, Ebola virus was isolated from semen in a man who was infected in a laboratory 61 days prior.
8. Are there any lasting effects in survivors?
Although fatality rates are high, some people do survive Ebola. Medical experts are still trying to understand why Ebola has such a low survival rate; they say any chance of beating it depends on early access to medical care when the first symptoms show up.
Most people who survive Ebola will likely be able to return to a normal life; however, they may develop certain chronic conditions affecting their joints and eyes. These problems could stick around for the rest of a survivor’s life.
9. Has Ebola ever left Africa?
Yes, but only in primates. Three of these events occurred in America: in 1989, 1990 and 1996. In 1989 and 1990, quarantine facilities in Reston, Virginia, as well as Pennsylvania and Texas, saw a new strain of the disease in infected monkeys imported from the Philippines. The virus was known as the "Reston virus." The same happened in Texas in 1996. No human got sick in any of those cases.
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta will receive one of the infected American health workers for treatment in an isolation unit, the hospital announced Thursday. 10. Are authorities testing travelers at U.S. airports?
Not currently. GW's Dr. Simon said that, in his opinion, to do so would be "foolish." "This is not a hugely infectious disease, if only about 1,000 people in a population of millions have contracted it," he said.
The volume of travelers through the airports would make such testing very difficult, slow and expensive. Also, the risk of transmitting the disease from one passenger to another during a flight is low.
At the moment, the risk is contained to certain patches of the Southwest and Central Africa, and the CDC doesn't consider the risk of Ebola infection in the U.S. significant.
Dr. Simon said he thought that if the virus reached the U.S., it would not be as much of an issue as it currently is in Africa.
"I think we could contain it," he said. "We have very good isolation procedures here."
Our 1...........
why are we allowing it to enter hear and for what purpose?
10. Are authorities testing travelers at U.S. airports?
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
Nigeria. Boko Haram. Al Qaeda in the Magreb (AQIM). Ebola.
All they have to do is infect an assembly point for travelers to the US (airport) or hotel. Maybe even manufacture a persistent presence in such assembly areas (an insider), in order to re-seed the virus over many flights.
“The grave situation prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue travel warnings on Thursday to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. They urged travelers to forgo all nonessential travel to those countries.”
When they close the airports in West Africa to departing flights we will know they are serious.
This site has an article on airborne warnings for the virus with the caveat that this (the warning)is not for general public consumption. Mildly concerning.
http://pissinontheroses.blogspot.com/2014/08/alert-cdc-warns-hospitals-on-ebola.html
Read the article: "When the outbreak started local health workers weren’t taking proper precautions. It spread through the hospital staff. Seven nurses from this hospital have been admitted to the centre in Monrovia; six are dead."
The nurses in question weren't covered head to toe. They didn't take the precautions that are being taken by the author of this article and they died as a result.
I cannot believe all of he uneducated worry warts popping up.
If it shows up, stay indoors. Use your prepped food and water.
There is not much else you are going to do.
Stop whining and get ready. And stop spreading BS rumors.
Yeah, I liked this quote “I think we could contain it,” he said. “We have very good isolation procedures here.”
We also have 300 million people here, many living cheek by jowl in huge densely populated cites. There is no way we have any adequate facilities to really handle a serious disease outbreak.
Imagine trying to quarantine the Bronx, or Chicago.
“The local meat market guy was in the hospital for 3 weeks with typhus...”
OMG! How did he get that? How do you know he had that?
I just listened to a long interview with a guy who’s written a book about the Polish/German scientist who created a vaccine for typhus and how he managed to sort of work-around the Nazis who controlled poland that that time.
It sounded like a dreadful disease, and I remember they said it was spread by body lice, which are very different from head lice.
But you know AIDS really is hard to get. It’s blood-to-blood with AIDS, not just “bodily fluids”.
“When they close the airports in West Africa to departing flights we will know they are serious.”
So agree that needs to be done. Or rather other countries must refuse to let flights from there land.
Disabling the airports is easier (and more humane) than shooting down inbound aircraft.
It seems the nurses were exposed before they started taking precautions.
But who would have the authority to do that? Those countries would have to do it themselves and they probably don’t want to because I’m sure there are some rich people over there and they don’t want to see their escape route closed.
Unless activists determine that those "good isolation procedures" have a disparate impact on minorities, glbt or other politically protected classes, in which case, we'll just have to die. It is not the first time that this country has attempted suicide to assuage political activists.
WHO.
Man, there go my vacation plans.
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