The Ebola virus was discovered in 1976. It has four strains, each from a different geographic area, but all give their victims the same painful, often lethal symptoms. The Ebola virus and Marburg virus are the two known members of the Filovirus family. Marburg is a relative of the Ebola virus. The four strains of Ebola are Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Reston, and Ebola Tai. Each one is named after the location where it was discovered. These filoviruses cause hemorrhagic fever, which is actually what kills victims of the Ebola virus. Hemorrhagic fever is defined as a group of viral aerosol infections, characterized by fever, chills, headache, fatigue, and respiratory symptoms. This is followed by capillary hemorrhages, and, in severe infection, kidney failure, hypotension, and, possibly, death. The incubation period for Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever ranges from 2-21 days. The blood fails to clot and patients may bleed from injection sites and into the gastrointestinal tract, skin and internal organs. Massive destruction of the liver is one distinct symptom of Ebola. This virus does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to do. It also requires bio-safety level four containment, the highest and most dangerous level. HIV the virus that causes AIDS requires only a bio-safety level of two. In reported outbreaks, 50%-90% of cases have been fatal. Ebola can be spread in a number of ways. Ebola reproduction in infected cells takes about eight hours. Hundreds to thousands of new virus cells are then released during periods of a few hours to a few days. In most outbreaks, transmission from patient to patient within hospitals has been associated within the reuse of needles and syringes. High rates of transmission in outbreaks have occurred from patients to family members who provide nursing care without barriers to prevent exposure to blood, other body fluids such as, vomit, urine and feces. Risk for transmitting the infection appears to be highest during the later stages of illness. Those symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, shock, and frequently hemorrhaging. Even a person who has recovered from the symptoms of the illness may have the virus present in the genital secretions for a short time after. This makes it possible for the virus to be spread by sexual activity. Complete recovery is reached only when none virus’s cells are left in any body fluids. This is quite rare. Ebola Zaire was identified in 1976 in Northern Zaire and was the first documented appearance of the virus.
Ebola Zaire, a type of strain of Ebola, attacks every organ and tissue in the human body except skeletal muscle and bone. Small blood clots begin to appear in the bloodstream. The blood then thickens and slows, and the clots fit together in a mosaic. The mosaic thickens and throws more clots and the clots drift through the bloodstream into the small capillaries, where they get stuck. This shuts off the blood supply to various parts of the body, causing dead spots to appear in the brain, liver, kidneys, lings, intestines, and all through the skin.
There is but one other virus similar to the Ebola, which is a Filovirus, and that is Marburg. Ebola has a 90% death rate, whereas, Marburg is not as deadly. Their long and ropelike shape rather than roundness, as is most other viruses, characterize Filoviruses.
The Ebola virus is a member of a family of RNA viruses know as Filoviruses, because they resemble thread. Filoviruses are among the most mysterious viruses in the world because their natural history remain unknown and their pathogenesis poorly understood. The family consists of Ebola and Marburg viruses. Marburg and Ebola both cause hemorrhagic fevers (www.encyclopedia.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 first discovered in 1994 in chimpanzees in the Tia Forest in Africa. On November 24, 2007, the Ebola-Bundibugyo branch was discovered with an approximate total of 116 people infected in the first outbreak and 39 deaths. The Ebola-Reston is the only one of the five subtypes to not affect humans, only nonhuman primates. It first broke out in Reston, Virginia in 1989 among crab eating macaques.
Y. H. LI, CHEN S. P et al. Evolutionary History of Ebola Virus (serial online). 2014; 142 (1-1138). Available from: Academic Search Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed May 13, 2014.
In 1976 the first two Ebola outbreaks were recorded. In Zaire and western Sudan five hundred and fifty people reported the horrible disease. Of the five hundred and fifty reported three hundred and forty innocent people died. Again in 1995 Ebola reportedly broke out in Zaire, this time infecting over two hundred and killing one hundred and sixty. (Bib4, Musilam, 1)
Ebola started its first outbreak in West Africa. According to the World Health Organization (2014) “Ebola first took place in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks, one in Nzara, Sudan.., in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo... [and the] latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from witch the disease takes its name”. The disease has also started spreading through countries such as Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (which are West Africa countries).
The first stage looks very similar to the flu, its symptoms being weakness and stomach pain or nausea. The second stage occurs four to seven days after a person has been infected. Ebola is known for causing extreme bleeding, which happens near the end of the illness. Seven to ten days after becoming affected by the virus patients are at the end of the line; there is confusion and bleeding both internally and externally. People who die from the Ebola virus are dying from multiple organ failure and shock. The shock is caused by all of the bleeding that is happening inside your
The Ebola virus, being from the virus pathogen, isn’t a living organism and therefore invades host cells and takes over the nucleus which allows it to replicate itself and survive. The disease itself is spread by any type of fluids such as saliva, blood, moisture from breathing and also it can be present in a male’s semen. In the body it spreads via the blood stream and infects healthy organ cells causing them to be damaged and killed, which leads to internal bleeding and in some cases organ failure. In the West Africa outbreak, 28,000 cases of Ebola were reported with 11,000 of those cases proving to be fatal (as reported by the world health organisation). One of the symptoms of Ebola is that on the renal systems and the liver and that is that their function is significantly reduced and that can be followed by internal and external bleeding e.g. bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose or mouth
The Ebola outbreak started to make families abandon their love ones. Dealing with the disease that causing many to die in West Africa, people who interact with this dangerous and epidemic virus are treated like outsiders. After Mr. Kamara , a villager, started working for the Ebola task force, his family said, “ he was no longer welcome in his village”(Nossiter and Solomon). The quotation could illustrate to the audience that people in West Africa would deny their loved ones who joined fight against of Ebola. Families broken up by the virus of Ebola. The illness was easy to contract by just physical contact. Helene Cooper asserts,”Ebola is spread through bodily fluids: vomit, blood, feces, tears , saliva, and sweat”. The illness illustrates
The version of the virus that made it to Sierra Leone branched from the Guinean strain in February, Stephen Gire, an infectious disease researcher at Harvard University and the Broad Institute, and colleagues report. The virus is a variety of Zaire Ebola virus but carries 341 genetic changes not seen in previous outbreaks.
Ebola is spread through body fluids, including sweat and blood; Coming in contact with any of the body fluids infected with the virus will most likely cause
The Ebola virus originated in the depths of the Democratic Republic of the Congo along the Ebola River. Little else is known about its origin but researchers believe that it was first transmitted from a non-human primate or bat. The virus can be contracted several ways including direct contact and contact with infected blood or bodily fluid. It is easy as accidently touching infected saliva or changing a Band-Aid on an infected person. Symptoms of the virus can range greatly but fever, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and unexplained hemorrhaging are some of the most common. The Ebola virus attacks the body through the immune system, eventually breaking down everything in its path starting with the immune cells. The virus could ultimately
There are three different stands of Ebola; Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Reston, and a sister virus named Marburg. Ebola Zaire being the most lethal of all four of the viruses has fatality rate of eighty-eight percent. Ebola Sudan is not quite as fatal as Ebola Zaire, but doesn’t fall too short at a staggering fifty-three
The third one is by Johnson and Johnson and it is now ready for testing. The plan is that these three different immunisations will be tested across the three most affected nations in western Africa. But first they need to test it on animals with the disease. There are also drug researches that are still ongoing. There are two potential drugs that have undergone testing at the Medicines Sans Frontireres Facility. One of the drugs is the Favipiravir, an antiviral drug approved in Japan. Scientists said that the drug won’t help patients who are mostly likely to die from Ebola but this drug can help people who are in the early stages of the illness. He quoted “this drugs needs more result outside the trails environment”. The other dug is the Brindicidofovir: an antiviral drug that has been tested in Liberia. Like any other Ebola drug, there is no clinical evidence that proves the Brindicidovir drug can cure Ebola. Some of ways of preventing this disease is to avoid bush meat, don’t handle remains of animals and humans, always wash your hands and importantly avoid areas of known areas of