Ebola Virus Essay, Research Paper

The virus is active in monkeys and they acquire it every second fall. The virus is not deadly to the monkeys. In Africa many people eat monkey meat as a source of protein and this is how they get the Ebola virus in their systems. There have been theories that the Ebola virus can be transmitted from bats to people and that the bats have the Ebola virus in them. It has never been scientifically proven that bats carry the Ebola virus. The Ebola virus is spread from person to person much like the AIDS virus is spread through body fluids. In many of the medical facilities in the developing countries of Africa needles and syringes are reused because of a low budget this can also contribute to the spreading of the Ebola virus. The Ebola virus can be spread just from close contact with infected person. Symptoms of the Ebola virus take about four to sixteen days to first appear. These first symptoms are very much like the common flu bug, they include fever, severe headaches, severe vomiting and diarrhea. The virus then targets the liver, lymphatic organs and kidneys. Infected people begin to bleed out of al openings in the body. The virus then turns all the organs it effects into a thick liquid like fluid and it also destroys the pain receptors in the brain so for the last few days a person infected with the virus is alive they are practically zombies. They are alive but they have no sense of it at all, their body no longer functions and they no longer respond to anything. It only takes a few days for a person to die once they have been infected this badly with the virus. Once a person has been infected that badly with the Ebola virus there is no coming back from it. Many of the people infected don’t even reach it that far they usually die of shock first.

Outbreaks of the Ebola virus have been very limited over the past few years with only a few small outbreaks in Africa. Once a person has been diagnosed with the Ebola virus they must be isolated so they are not a threat to spread the virus to other people. Once a person has been isolated, doctors and nurses must wear gowns, masks, gloves and goggles when taking care of a patient. The doctors and nurses must carefully dispose of needles, syringes, wastes and in some cases corpses. Disposable materials are burned once