Ebola is a disease transmitted by wild animals to people, and can spread from human to human as well. Occurring in major outbreaks scattered throughout history, the human race has finally managed to temporarily eradicate the spread of it.
Now, ebola is a serious disease. Outbreaks occur occasionally, and the disease first started in 1976, with an outbreak in both modern day South Sudan and in the DR of the Congo (that’s the Democratic Republic of the Congo, if you couldn’t tell). This is all well and good you may be thinking, how does this recent disease become so deadly?
Firstly, ebola’s case fatality rate is 50%. A case fatality rate is how many people will die infected with the disease, and is usually in the form of a percentage. This is just the average, some outbreaks can be as low as 25% or as high as 90%. 90%. That means that if you and nine other people have ebola, with that fatality rate, chances are that if any survive, only one person will (this is likely survive). Even the average is horrible. The average of 50% means that every other person infected with ebola will die. The lowest case fatality rate of 25% is slightly better.
Ebola can result in a large amount of fatalities fast. Being a major disease, many look towards a vaccine for a cure, but those people will look for a while. With no current listed vaccine, at least according to the WHO (World Health Organization), the disease is technically uncurable. There are currently two potential candidates for a vaccine, and the only way to currently stop the disease is by prolonging i.e. managing its symptoms.
The symptoms can be managed by a few methods: fluids and electrolytes, oxygen, blood pressure medication, blood transfusions, and treatment for other infections.
So far, symptoms have been mentioned, a lot, but not discussed. Symptoms include a high fever, headaches, joint and muscle aches, sore throats, weaknesses, stomach pains and a lack of appetite. These symptoms increase as the disease worsens. It can cause internal bleeding, and bleeding from the eyes, ears, and nose. Some may even vomit up blood, have bloody diarrhea and get rashes. Basically, it threatens you by blood loss.
The latest outbreak of ebola, that begun in March 2014, is the largest breakout since the first discovery of the disease in ‘76. In that outbreak, there were more deaths than all the others combined. This one spread by air, when travellers carried it by flying, and over land by some other travellers.
Many wonder what the pattern is is this disease. Much like other diseases, patterns are hard to discern, mainly due to just how diseases are transmitted. It isn’t a guaranteed transmission, not everyone will get the disease. This does work out and help us, as it means that fewer people are afflicted, but lessens the amount of information we can learn about the disease.
Currently, the known patterns in ebola are that severely affected countries are Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. All these countries have three common points: weak health systems, lack of human and infrastructural resources, and are all recently freed from conflict and political instability.
A slightly unique fact about this disease is that it can be transmitted by dead body. This disease cannot be transmitted by a person without any symptoms of ebola, even if they have the disease.
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