Posted on 12/29/2001 12:54:28 PM PST by Neuromancer
Saturday December 29 12:30 PM ET
Doctors Fear Ebola is Spreading
By ALEXANDRA ZAVIS, Associated Press Writer
MAKOKOU, Gabon (AP) - Doctors confirmed Saturday that a 16-year-old boy has the Ebola (news - web sites) virus and another patient has similar symptoms, prompting fears the deadly disease is continuing to spread in Central Africa.
The boy was admitted last week at Makokou's hospital and tested for Ebola, which already has killed 21 people in Gabon and neighboring Republic of Congo, regional health director Prosper Abessolo Mengue said Saturday.
Another patient was admitted Friday with symptoms of the disease, including fever, diarrhea and vomiting. Neither patient is known to have had contact with any of the previous victims, raising the possibility of still more unidentified cases.
``This is very worrying,´´ said Dr. Julien Meyong, medical chief of the hospital in Makokou, about 360 miles east of the capital, Libreville. Medical officials have identified 18 Ebola cases in this remote part of Gabon since the outbreak began in late October, according to government figures. Fifteen of those patients died.
Twelve more suspected cases have been identified in neighboring Republic of Congo, with six deaths. The affected region is one of the most thinly populated in both countries. It is covered by vast forests with tiny villages inhabited by Pygmies and other hunter tribes.
A team of medical experts from the World Health Organization (news - web sites) and Gabon's health ministry arrived in December and has been working with military doctors to trace victims, treat patients and educate people about the disease.
They could spead this. When that one women, who was infected, dissapeared from Gabon into the wilds of Africa I was getting a little panicky. All a terrorist would have to do is walk thru a busy airport, or center of a big city with a vial of the stuff, or in a mist form (think asthma inhailer) and [puff puff] we'd all be infected. It's an AIRBORNE virus, remember. Think of the movie 12 Monkeys (Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt) and you'll have a fairly clear picture of what the kill effects would be like, if not the dramatization of life afterwords.
The biggest obsticle for them to spead it, is it's so very contaigious that it would be unlikely they could get it here without contaminating themselves or another region before they intended to. At that point we'd all be wishing it was just Anthrax. ;-)
No Sh&t sherlock! Once one of these folks gets on a jet plane,we all are in the same boat!
Goes without saying.
I'm in the middle of Tom Clancy's 'Executive Orders'.
Middle Eastern terrorists are bringing Eblola into our Country in shaving cream cans. Apparently Ebola is not spread via aerosol but by body fluids. However these terrorists have isolated a strain of the virus that can be spread via aerosol.
Aside from this development, one of the President's closest SS agents is of Middle Eastern decent and is a spy. The book starts taking up where a previous one leaves off, with a 747 crashing into the Capitol, killing most of the government.
Clancy's books can be so prophetic I'm almost afraid to read further.
I know it may be hard for some to acknowledge, but we (the United States in general, and President Bush in particular) has shown restraint in our response to the last terrorist act.
The master minds behind the last terrorist act underestimated our response. If they are so foolish to unleash this type of biological terror on our shores they will not get another chance.
The anger of the American people have been held in check because we see some action being taken, and no further attacks have occured against us. Will that anger remain in check if thousands of us are dying as a result of a biological attack?
I don't think so. We will demand the total destruction of those that bring terror to our shores, and the problem will be as it is now, how do you sort out the innocent from the guilty. I beleive the President will give those countries that harbor and support the terrorist one last chance to give them up. If not, total war against those countries.
Anyway, this is what I think will happen for what ever it is worth.
Don't sweat it, the good guys probably win. This being one of Clancy's books, do the Islamic terrorists have Irish names too?
Now we're saturated with them here in Texas.....
You'll never stand next to someone coughing in the check out line AGAIN!
There are indicia that it might be airborne but most vectors seem to have been through personal contact with infected persons.
Even so, I would not like to be in unprotected close proximity to virulent haemorrhagic fever of any sort, including Ebola or its cousin Marburg.
As to terrorism, while the CDC and Fort Dettrick ought no to reject the possiblility, it must be remembered that one strain is endemic to Equitorial Africa and another strain is endemic to Zimbabwe which has a large number of troops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Happy New Year everyone.
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