The Ebola Virus

In the year 1976, Ebola climbed out of its unknown hiding place, and caused the death of 340 people. Fear gripped the victims' faces, and uncertainty tortured their minds. The people of Zaire waited outside clinics, churches and in their homes for a treatment of the horrible disease, but there was no cure. They were forced to watch people die, hoping that they would be saved from the violent death of the Ebola virus. From the year of 1976 to the present date of 1996, researchers have searched for origin and cure of the virus. Scientist have carried out numerous studies and investigations, but no one has been able to find the right explanations.

Prevention of a world wide outbreak lies within the education of what the virus is capable of doing, how Ebola victims can be properly treated, and by performing prompt action to isolate the virus before it has dispersed. The Ebola virus is a member of a family of RNA viruses know as filoviruses. Marburg virus and four Ebola viruses: Ebola Zaire, Sudan, Reston and Tai are the five different viruses that have been known to cause disease in humans, while Ebola Reston only causes disease within monkeys. Filoviruses are the viruses responsible for causing viral hemorrhagic fevers.

All forms of virus of viral hemorrhagic fever begin with fever and muscle aches. Ebola Zaire attacks every organ and tissue in the human body except skeletal muscle and bone. It is a perfect parasite because it transforms virtually every part of the body into a digested slime of virus particles. The seven mysterious proteins that, assembled together, make up the Ebola-virus particle work as a relentless machine, a molecular shark, and they consume the body as the virus makes copies of itself. Your skin develops blood clots under the skin. Your organs turn to mush and the underlayers of your skin die and liquefy.

The ! skin bubbles up to form a blood rash. Your mouth bleeds, and you bleed around your teeth, and you may have hemorrhages from the salivary glands. Every opening in your body, no matter how small, excretes blood.

The surface of the tongue turns brilliant red and then falls off. It is swallowed or spat out when you vomit up blood. Your heart bleeds in itself and you are not dead. Blood gets into your eyelids and you weep blood.

Before you finally die your body twitches considerably from grand mal seizures.Ebola viruses are s...

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... while carrying out an investigation about a spate of deaths among local chimps of the Tai forest. When the Pasteur investigators examined tissue taken from the dead chimpanzee, they found that the animal's spleen and liver contained large areas of necrotic tissue resembling what had previously been found in autopsies of patients who perished from Ebola Zaire and Sudan. Instant investigation of the 4200 square-kilometer reserve of the Tai forest was launched, but to this day no trace to the location of Ebola has been found. The researcher was evacuated to a hospital in Switzerland where she recovered. The dedicated researcher has now returned to Ivory Coast to continue her work.

During most of these outbreaks, field teams of researchers have captured more than 3,000 birds and mammals, including small rodents and several thousand possible insects. Materials of these animals are now being processed for virus isolation. Blood samples of an estimated 64 suspected cases have also been serologically confirmed. Still to this day, many questions like "Where is Ebola originally from?" and "Will Ebola Zaire, Sudan, or Tai be able to become air- born?" remain a mystery.