Ebola Virus Essay, Research Paper

To: [email protected], AtCrossADH, EMOSSELL

3-20-00

Imagine, if you will, you have just gotten back from a great vacation! You got to see all the African hot spots, and Zaire was your favorite! The people were so nice! They let you taste their food, hunt their land, even get a body ready for burial. Considered a very high honor for an outsider!

You are home now and have a slight headache but after a great vacation like that who care? You take a few aspirins, get your film developed, pick up a few thing from the super market, to home. You still have your headache, but think nothing of it. You go to bed and the next morning your headache has gotten worse, and you have diarrhea now, but it is not “normal” diarrhea, it has blood in it. You call your doctor who tells you to come in right away. While you’re there you vomit and your vomit has blood in it also. They suspect you have hemmerageal, so they run some tests. From what the tests show you are perfectly fine, nothing go cause this. Soon your eyes become “ghost eyes” (the coming plaque p. 100) red, and looking off to the distance. The next day you die. You had the Ebola virus, one of the deadliest, most feared viruses known to man today.

In this paper you will learn the origin of Ebola, where the first outbreak was, the symptoms and the way the disease is spread. Further more you will learn some prevention methods and what vaccines, and cures there are, if any.

In 1996 two children found a dead chimpanzee which was wonderful to them. In Manitou, Gabon, their home, and all throughout central Africa, the chimpanzee is considered a delicacy.

The whole village was delighted, chimpanzees are a wonderful treat, because of their size, and their scarcity. Everyone helped prepare the animal for a feast; the men carried the large animal to the village, the women prepared it for dinner and the children helped.

Soon after that amazing dinner almost everyone who prepared the chimpanzee for dinner had gotten sick with high fever and headaches. Some were bleeding form their eyes and mouth. Within a week 13 were dead.

“Scientists had suspected that the disease? was transmitted to humans from chimpanzees or other forest relatives. Thanks to the latest outbreak, that theory now looks pretty solid.” (Where Does Ebola Hide? P1)

Humans are not the only creatures that can fall ill to the Ebola virus. A variety of animals have been known to die from the horrified virus.

It is thought that Ebola natural resiuor is a small, forest dwelling animal, such as a rodent. They think blood-sucking insects like Mosquitoes let the blood-borne virus pass from host to host.

The virus has been known to occur all over the world even a zoologist was infected in England in 1994. It has had more outbreaks in the Zaire, sudon, and Ivory Coast.

The symptoms of the virus can through you off guard in its first stages. They are very flu like in nature; high fever, headache, muscle aches, stomach pain and fatigue are some of the first symptoms you may experience.

After a week the symptoms , a bloody diarrhea, chest pains, bleeding through your eyes and mouth, your will go into shock, and finally death. When a person is in the final stages of the Ebola Virus, they get delirious. Talking to unseen people, dead realities, the family pet is very common in the final stages of this disease. Another symptom is “ghost eyes” (The coming plaque, p 100) they can stare at their wife, husband, child, mother, father and have no idea who that person is.

The Medical Science, “Viral Melton” by Paul Duchene, describes the symptoms by saying “How it kills is ghastly. The virus seizes the body cell by cell and breaks down each one. The body turns to jelly. Headaches are followed by nausea vomiting in which the disintegrating victim literally throws up his or her insides. The body’s blood-clotting function fails and every arifece bleeds.”

The virus is spread when a person is in close contact with the infected. Such as a nurse, doctor, family and friends are some of the few who are most likely to contract this disease. They can get Ebola by cleaning up after a diseased person. Anything that come from the body that that has blood, even a minute amount, can cause the virus to spread.

Some of the reason the Ebola virus has not become a plaque epidemic are, there have been not airborne strains that affect humans. Ebola Reston, a form of Ebola, was airborne, but that strain only affected monkeys. The outbreaks are in remote small villages, no big city outbreaks as of yet. Finally the virus usually kills itself off. With an average of a ten-day period until it kills a person, it leaves almost everyone dead so it won’t get passed on.

The Ebola’s death rate is pretty high. The Ebola Zaire strain kills ninety percent of its victims and the Ebola Sedan claimed fifty-three percent of its victims, unlike many plagues that have swept our planet. However, it does need to be stated that the Ebola Virus is not a plague, but, as stated in its name, it is a virus. In comparison, the bubonic plague which claimed the lives of twenty to thirty percent of the population.

There is no way to protect yourself from the deadly virus once you have contracted it. If you are planning a trip to a foreign country be sure to get the proper shots and vaccines that are needed. Use common sense when traveling; avoid dead or bleeding animals or people. When eating traditional native foods make sure that you are aware of where the meat came from. If you are careful and take precaution when traveling you should be fine.

There are no known cures, or vaccines, but there is an experimental “cure” in the works. The infected patient is given a blood transfusion from past Ebola survivors. Seven out of the eight patients given the treatment survived the ghastly virus.

It may not be the deadliest virus known to man today, but it is one of the quickest killers we known of today.

This awful filovirus, a thread like virus often described as tangled rope, hair, worms, snakes, with a ball shaped top compared to peppercorns, is a very fast killing, deadly virus. As Paul Duchene who wrote Viral Meltdown for Medical Science put it:”?It takes up to ten years for the AIDS virus, HIV, to kill its victims, and the death rate is reckoned to be one hundred percent. Ebola Zaire’s kill rate is ninety percent – bit it can achieve that in just ten days.”

The Ebola virus is named after the Ebola river in Zaire where in 1976 it first emerged infecting fifty five villages along the river. The newly emerging virus killed ninty point seven percent of the people it came in contact with. Making it a very feared, news orientated flu like virus.

Two boys playing in the woods ended life as one Gabon village knew it. After the two boys found the African delitcesey, the chimpanzee, they had a wonderful feast. With in a week thirteen of the villagers were dead from the feared Ebola virus. This could have been prevented, by educating the villages of the disastrous effects this virus can have on you people, and how it is spread.

Because no one took the time to tell these people no one knows what the natural reservoir is, what the symptoms are if they do get the Ebola virus, how to help prevent catching the virus and there are no known cures, or vaccines. Many villagers had to die.