Ebola Monologue

We live in a country where all children go to school to gain an education and 25% of them will go onto receive some type of college degree. Compare this to low-income countries, in which children are 16 times as likely to die prior to their fifth birthday (Nickitas, Middaugh & Aries, 2016). Beyond the lens of our smartphones, Facebook friends and Nike sneakers is a world full of desperate people wishing to have enough food to eat for today. Many parts of the world lack sanitation, safe housing, sparse medical care and no medication. The global health issue are everyone’s problems not only for the sake of altruism but, with the increase in global travel for routine business and pleasure, dangerous pathogen are no longer confine by boarders. The Ebola outbreak four years ago, proved the necessity of a global solution to global health issues. The collaborative practice of several world health agencies and economically developed countries along with the use of volunteers, statistical updates, the latest literature and practices kept this outbreak mostly contained to its region of origin and the death toll to approximately 11,000 people (mainly in West Africa) (WHO,

Because of the uncertainties and evolving nature of infectious diseases, outbreaks can cause substantial fear in communities and in the general public. Such is the case with the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003. It was the first serious infectious disease of the twenty first century and questions about its origin and treatment greatly outnumbered the answers.

This is an example of being proactive to a situation where cooperation among the government, police and its people through the media and programs implemented were able to reduce such a devastating disease that along claiming human life, is also expensive to treat in the long run causing a economic impact.

Infectious epidemics and pandemics have happened all through mankind's history. “They remain the prime cause of death worldwide and will not be conquered during our lifetimes.” The flu of 1918 was one of the deadliest epidemics in history. “It infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide–about one-third of the planet’s population at the time–and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims. More than 25 percent of the U.S. population became sick, and some 675,000 Americans died during the pandemic.” No one knew how the virus spread, there were no antibiotics to fight it, and no flu shots to prevent it. In the final year of World War I, it struck terror in the hearts of people all across Europe and left more death in its wake than the combined military actions of the combatants. “It killed more Americans in a few months than World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the

In a response to the polio outbreak of 1916, Dr. Haven Emerson, the Health Commissioner for New York City, stated: “we have learned little that is new about the disease, but much that is old about ourselves.” The meaning of this has to do with the ideology that no matter the era, people have a common response to the outbreak of contagious disease. Human nature supplies us as humans with a common reaction to dealing with disease, and it is one that can be seen during the Black Death, polio epidemics, and ebola epidemics, as well as many other epidemics. These responses can be both positive and negative, and often have to do with containment of the disease, preventative measures - which may or may not be effective; and scapegoating. Although there may be individualized responses for each of these diseases, the way in which the health-care officers and the public handle the outbreak of disease generally follows the same pattern overall.

In 2014 the United States was hit with a force far more deadly and dangerous than many threats received. The ebola virus took the world by storm after it was carried to the United States and spread by people who had visited West Africa. This virus was all the more deadly as it often took hours for any symptoms to occur. In this time the Center for Disease Control spent much time and many resources looking for answers to the many questions they had. Under the time constraint and scrutinizing public, they had to determine what ebola was, what it did and its effects on the general public.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more commonly known as the CDC, is a major governmental department serving the country in healthcare. Per their official mission statement, The CDC “serves as the national focus for developing and applying disease prevention and control, environmental health, and health promotion and health education activities designed to improve the health of the people of the United States” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Most citizens may think of the CDC in situations not unlike the Ebola or Zika outbreaks, or even in the outlandish ideas of a virus bringing people back from the dead. These Centers across the United States survey disease outbreak,

The average fatality rate of patients infected with Ebola is around 50% according to the World Health Organization. The nonfiction book titled The Hot Zone by Richard Preston takes readers through true events pertaining to an outbreak of Ebola in the late 1980’s at a monkey testing facility in Reston, Virginia. The author heavily emphasizes the danger surrounding ignorance and uncertainty in regard to the viral and morbid Ebola at the conclusion of the book. While Preston makes this point evident countless times, three particular quotes give a clear example of Preston’s intention.

A water vessel packed full of refugees unwell with yellow fever, sluggish as a snail, sail over to Philadelphia in 1793. A sly fox, one lone mosquito bites one refugee and flies off to infect someone else and spread the illness... We have an epidemic! Now, the older, respected Philadelphia doctors fought with the newcomer French doctors from Haiti over which was the genuine treatment to cure a patient infected with yellow fever. Their ideas were all very disparate, but both had a few little similar characteristics. Still, with all their efforts, by the time the fever died, 2,000 to 5,000 people had become deceased.

Imagine a scene as you might find in hell, but in the context of medieval times. Rotting, disfigured bodies line the muddy trenches on the outskirts of town accompanied by numerous wheelbarrows. Under the veil of darkness, fuzzy tiny creatures scurry between the wheelbarrows and trenches. At another section of the town, the ground seems like a blanket-- as if it is covering something large beneath it and with shovels to decorate it. A few feet from the unleveled ground, was the residential area where houses lined the streets. Some of those houses were covered with boards while others seemed to be vacant. Overhead, a smell of death lingers in the air with the scent of smoke from the blazing fires around town. As crowds of people walk by, they bend their heads down to take whiffs of their plain white handkerchiefs and

In 1983, a disease known as CNSB-1 was spotted in South America. By 1985 the disease has traveled to north america by airplane. When 1990 came around, every major city has been affected. Quarantine zones were established in the poorest parts or town. The disease was cured in 1995 but it still claimed the lives of 49,920,000 people in america. Progress had slowed down to a crawl and the economy was left in shambles after the U.S government put all of it’s resources in destroying CNSB-1 before it destroyed their nation. 1998 comes along and the quarantine zones are still around, only now filled with a new type or sickness.Terrorist gangs inhabit them and live by randomly raiding surrounding communities. For those who live in such areas, the only

I am a peasant, but you can call me Dr. Patricia. The black death can be described as an epidemic of bubonic plague, of which was caused by the bacterium known as Yersinia pestis that circulates among wild rodents where they live in great numbers and density. It took place in the 13th century. The black plague is causing a bacteria called yersinia pestis. It is coming for us. I began coming for us in Central Asia, but it never fully ended. Everyone in the entire world was affected by this very dangerous plague and even to the extent that people stopped visiting friends and family because they weren't sure if they had fallen ill to this plague.If you had buobes, this was one of the many ways you could tell if they had the black plague.This so

Ah Jane! Sorry to hear you had this virus too. It's very strong,normally I didn't get sick easily... Hope you are both doing better now. Thank you, for your advice, I'll take lemon. I do not have gigner but I'm using Chia seed- it's great. I have to buy ginger, never thought of it before. Thank you. I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow. Wish you have a good day!

I chose to read The Lassa Ward: One Man’s Fight Against One of the World’s Deadliest Diseases for the AP Human Geography summer assignment. The Lassa Ward is authored by Ross I. Donaldson, who holds doctor of medicine and master of public health degrees from the University of California Los Angeles. The novel was published by St. Martin’s Press in New York, NY in 2009. Dr. Donaldson’s memoir focuses on how he treated Lassa cases in Sierra Leone, in the midst of an outbreak of the virus during the summer months of 2003. Through explanations of his surroundings and the ward where he treated his patients, the book addresses the medical need of the region by describing the primitive condition of medicine occurring in the third-world country that

The main character of the story Typhoid Fever is a boy named Francis, otherwise known as Frank or Frankie. Frankie is a child that is sick with Typhoid. Patricia is another child staying the hospital that he is at. They enjoy holding conversations together, though they aren’t supposed to be talking to each other at all. Both of them enjoy reading, and have a few books by their bedsides which they occasionally share with each other.