The Ebola Virus Essay

Historically Ebola has had a serious impact on human health and hygiene and still does due to the fact of no vaccine or treatment being discovered, but thanks to improvements in scientific and medical knowledge the virus itself is now controllable.

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

Doctors, as well as medical researchers, have often stated that there exist similarities as well as difference between HIV Aids and Ebola. The most notable similarity is that the two are viral conditions. Consequently, they can be compared based on characteristics common to viral diseases. The two spread through contract with body fluids of infected persons. Ebola and HIV are incurable illnesses that result in widespread stigma. However, both differ greatly despite the fact that they are virally transmitted. Their emergence is traced to the African continent (Jin, 2015). If left untreated, they turn out to be fatal. Governmental authorities, as well as non-governmental institution, have made tremendous efforts in curbing the spread of these killer diseases all over the world.

In late 2013, Ebola virus disease (EVD), a deadly and lethal disease, remerged in West Africa spreading to various countries in the region. In humans, the disease is spread through contact with infected bodily fluids leading to haemorrhagic fever (World Health Organization [WHO], 2015). Originating in 1976 in equatorial Africa, past outbreaks with a few hundred cases had been contained within rural, forested areas in Uganda and Congo (Piot, 2012). In 2014, a total of 20, 206 cases and 7,905 deaths were reported to have occurred in up to eight countries worldwide. Of all cases and deaths resulting from the disease, 99.8% occurred in three neighbouring West African countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea (WHO, 2014). With a case fatality rate from about 50% to 90%, and the absence of preventative or curative therapies, the Ebola epidemic has led to overall global alarm and further elucidated existing global health disparities that perpetuated the epidemic with these West African countries.

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 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.

The whole world is at edge knowing that Ebola is a very lethal virus and it is very tough to treat and cure an infected person. But it has been seen that in countries were level of development is higher and health care is easily reached this disease can be fought.

The Ebola virus is deadly, but it will become a major threat to humanity if and only if it becomes airborne and a vaccine is not developed.

In both Ebola Outbreak by Dabbous and A mask on the Face of Death by Seltzer they discuss the social and political problems contributing to the spread of Ebola and HIV/AIDS. These Epidemics continue to spread thought out the world to millions of people. The main areas that these diseases began to spread began in very poverty stricken countries. Not only did poverty play a role in the spread but both Dabbous and Seltzer pointed out the lack of education in the area which leads people to easily be manipulated by stories about the diseases. The cultural practices in these areas contribute majorly to the spread of the Ebola and the AIDS virus. These viruses continue to spread to other parts of the world and is hard to contain to a specific location.

Consequently, as I dug up pages upon pages of Information about this Virus, my interest shifted from this one species of living Organisms to the physicochemical and biochemical processes that occur within living Organisms and that prompts complexity of life. In my last few months of secondary Education, although Ebola Virus

The Ebola virus is negatively stranded RNA type. It requires a polymerse transformation to reproduce. This leaves the virus subject to genetic code errors creating subtypes of Ebola. There are four known subtypes of the Ebola virus. The original subtype was Ebola Zaire (www.netLibrary.com).

The Ebola Haemorrahagic Fever, or Ebola for short, was first recognized as a virus in 1967. The first breakout that caused the Ebola virus to be recognized was in Zaire with 318 people infected and 280 killed. There are five subtypes of the Ebola virus, but only four of them affect humans. There are the Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Ivory Coast and the Ebola-Bundibugyo. The fifth one, the Ebola-Reston, only affects nonhuman primates. The Ebola-Zaire was recognized on August 26, 1976 with a 44 year old schoolteacher as the first reported case. The Ebola-Sudan virus was also recognized in 1976 and was thought to be that same as Ebola-Zaire and it is thought to have broken out in a cotton factory in the Sudan. The Ebola-Ivory Coast was

SECOND POINT: Although an outbreak in America is highly unlikely, the fact that Ebola has been diagnosed on American soil brings fear to all. Because of its infectiousness and long incubation period, and the banality of early symptoms, it can be difficult to track and contain. We also do not have a cure for this disease, sure we have experimental drugs, but nothing official. The spread has been much quicker in this outbreak than others, affecting both urban and rural areas. Usual protective measures to prevent the spread appear to be less effective in this epidemic. What ebola does to the human body defies reason and is something like out of a horror movie, not a text book. Americans feel hopeless and vulnerable because Ebola is here. The victim who flew from Liberia to Dallas, Texas on September 30th of this year did expose others and there is a risk of it spreading. The Ebola virus is the most terrifying and least-understood virus known to man. We are witnessing the onset of a deadly mutation anticipated and feared for almost four decades. Americans have watched fully informed and trained health care workers contract Ebola.

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?

In Sweden, where I live, the disease is not even seen as deadly anymore. Only approximately 6,500 Swedes are today infected