EBOLA Has 90% Fatality Rate (I.e. Any Person Who Contracts it Has a 90% Chance of Dying )

Kaulu Gilbert Writes;

The first Ebola Out break occurred in 1976 in Nzara, Sudan and in Congo DRC at a village called Yambuku along the Ebola river where it derives its name. Currently there is no vaccine or cure for Ebola which has a 90% fatality rate (I.e. Any person who contracts it has a 90% chance of dying). The current outbreak in West Africa is the waste outbreak ever which has claimed more than 600 lives so far, the first outbreak in 1976 claimed about 280 lives while a outbreak in 2012 which occurred in Congo DRC & Uganda claimed about 50 lives.
The Ebola virus is transmitted to humans via coming into contact with secretions,organs & body fluids of infected wild animals like Chimpazees,Gorillas,fruit bats among others.Human-to-Human transmission occurs by coming into contact with blood,body fluids and secretions, and broken mucous membranes of an infected person.
Ebola is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by sudden onset of fever,intense weakness,muscle pain,headache and sore throat.This is followed by vomiting,diarrhoea,rash,impaired kidney & liver function and in some cases both internal & external bleeding occurs.
There is no cure for EVD (Ebola Virus Disease) hence only supportive treatment is given to patients with Ebola which mainly involves the giving of Fluids with electrolytes to replace the fluids that the body is losing.
Currently all disease surveillance systems worldwide have being put on Alert after an Infected American who had lost a sister to Ebola was allowed to leave Liberia on a plane to Ghana where he later got onto another plane to Nigeria Lagos city where he later died in a process coming into contact with a lot of people who might have gone to any country in the world. Efforts to track people who might have come into contact with him are underway though with difficulties.
My thoughts: Under the current situation where there is no cure (investigations are being done on possible treatments which might take years to come to use)for the disease,preventing the transmission of the disease among humans is the most important intervention in stopping this catastrophe. And this can only be achieved by strengthening the disease surveillance systems in the countries at the epi-centre of the outbreak as well as all the countries worldwide to ensure that all infected people are quickly separated (Quarantined) from those not infected.
Below is a picture of the symptomatology (I.e. The typical path of the Ebola virus in a human being).
References:
-World Health organization(WHO) Ebola factsheet
-African business review
-several news sources

Posted by Editor on July 31, 2014. Filed under HEALTH. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry