Epidemic Outbreaks in Africa Essay

5. In what ways could the virus have been passed to other people from the time Monet left his house until he arrived at Nairobi hospital?

There has been an acute worry roaming about the United States concerning the Ebola Outbreak. Originally, Ebola had never touched the United States until September of 2014. (4) The disease was originated from and named after a river in the Democratic of Congo. Since discovered, there have been known cases in Africa. There have been many very deadly cases of Ebola - the fatality rate is estimated to from about fifty to ninety percent. (2) To the United States, there had never been any worry about the disease until September twentieth of 2014. A man by the name of Thomas Eric Duncan boarded flight 822 from Liberia to Dallas, Texas. Flight 822 was where it all began. Nobody had any

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.

Unlike HIV or other global viruses, Ebola is until this day geographically restrained, facilitating the deduction that the responsible originated from West Africa or returned from areas confirmed as danger zones. The list of suspects is indeed rather short: it amounts to Western Africans travelling to America and U.S. citizen contaminated in the same region. The latter category is, as cases in the western world indicate, consisted virtually exclusively of humanitarian helpers and health personal having been in contact with Ebola patients. Albeit these categories are subject to broad generalizations, they are the fruit of the apparent human condition to investigate, regardless of the rationality behind the reasoning. Seale baptised these generalisations “health imagined communities” (Seale, 2007, p. 92). Lupton emphasized on the experience that constructed risk communities don’t differ from real risk communities as much in their consequences as they do in their

In 2014 the world watched in horror as West Africa experienced the largest Ebola epidemic in history. Affected countries in Africa included Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone and the epidemic, having begun in December 2013, went on for a full year, with additional cases occurring throughout 2015. Over 19,000 cases were reported by December 2014 and of those, 7,518 lost their lives. Today, we know that in total, over 11,000 people lost their lives ("Previous case counts", 2016). There were many factors at play in this outbreak, such as the emergence of a new strain Ebola virus; a lack of preparedness in West Africa, where Ebola had not been seen prior to 2014; a shortage of health care workers and subsequent death of many more them, leading

Although Ebola caught the world’s attention during the 1995 outbreak in Zaire, the first outbreak occurred in 1976. As the chart below displays, 71% of the people infected died as a result of Ebola during this first outbreak (Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 56 (2): 247-270, 1978). With the current outbreak, this ratio has dramatically decreased as a result of scientific research leading to early detection, but the current infected population is more than 20 times the amount of any previous outbreak and this number continues to grow as no vaccine exists to prevent the disease.

This book displays the historical encounters and effects of the Ebola virus have had on past lives and how the virus functions to destroy its host.

Because of the rapid circulation of this “virus”, it was inevitable that Valley High School’s own students would become exposed to such an ailment.

Two months later, there is another outbreak of the Ebola virus in a district of Zaire called Bumba. Nearly twice as deadly as the Sudan strain, Ebola Zaire initially surfaces at the Yambuku Mission Hospital, where Belgian nuns are treating hundreds of villagers with the same five hypodermic syringes. The virus breaks in 55 villages simultaneously, first appearing in individuals who received injections from the nuns, then in their family members, and then in the nursing staff and nuns.

The Ebola epidemic is a viral disease that spreads very quickly and has high mortality rate. The outbreak is actually an international disaster at the moment and has created a lot of tension worldwide (Spark, 2015). Presently the epidemic is ongoing in most of West Africa countries with Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea being the most badly hit. The epidemic has been reported in Nigeria, Mali, United States, Senegal and Spain too (World Bank, 2015). However, the epidemic has been maintained in most of the countries except in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea where Ebola is yet to be controlled. It is worth noting that other countries especially African countries are at a high risk of reporting cases of Ebola making governments from all parts of the world to remain alert (The World Bank, 2014).

Children around the world fear the dark because they do not understand it. Much like a child’s fear of the dark, the panic caused by the Ebola virus is largely due to misunderstanding and is often blown out of proportion. The Ebola virus is discussed in the media because it generates hysteria, even though it is nowhere near as threatening as it is often claimed to be. Do not make the assumption that the virus itself is not lethal, as indeed it is one of the deadlier pathogens in the world; however, a variety of factors contribute to making the Ebola virus a less than perfect killer; in order to know why, it is important to understand what exactly the Ebola virus is.

The author should have given her opinion based on her findings and research of the article. Finks should have went in depth and compare and contrast the statistics of when the Ebola virus had breakout in Liberia in the spring and how the numbers of cases changed, whether they increase or decrease and also she should of explain whether or not if the people of Liberia took more safety measures this time or was it the same reaction they have when the virus breakout in the spring. "But because Liberian celebrated early once before, believing the virus had been eradicated in the spring, only to see it rage back with greater force in the summer" (Fink, 2014). The article present more of a concern on whether or not the people of Liberia trust the government with their sick or dead relatives and why they are burying their loved ones by themselves instead of getting the government involved, which results into little to no patients at the International Medical Corps treatment center and other treatment and laboratory

“…. I also heard that a doctor died of Ebola, what I asked myself is, this doctor protected himself before attending to the Ebola patient so if Ebola is not in the air how can the doctor just get close to the patient and contract the disease which affected him and he did. So I asked and I was told that it is through the air the doctor got it” (FGD, Women, Rural, GAR).

The outbreak impacts rural communities which have already suffered from remoteness and inadequate access to health services. Staff from MoH are supported by Pasteur Institute of Madagascar, who are all experienced on control measures. However, local conditions make their implementation complex.

Normally infecting fruit bats, the Ebola virus found a mutation allowing it to spread to humans. This virus is an acute and often fatal illness. This virus first erupted in two outbreaks in 1976 (one occurring in Nzara and Sudan, while the other occurred in a village near the Ebola river, where the virus takes its name.) The current outbreak, starting in West Africa with the potential to spread throughout the world,  is  larger and more complex than previous outbreaks. This virus has caused more deaths than all other past Ebola outbreaks combined. With approximately five people infected with the virus every hour in Sierra Leone alone, how far – and how fast – will the Ebola virus go?