Jigar Patel
6th period Ebola (EVD) also known as hemorrhagic fever is a dangerous viral disease that causes internal bleeding in the body. It is a disease in humans and nonhuman primates such as monkeys and chimpanzees (Wikipedia). Ebola was first discovered in 1976 near the Ebola river in Africa.
There are five types of ebola viruses bundibugyo ebolavirus, reston ebolavirus, sudan ebolavirus, tai forest ebolavirus, and zaire ebolavirus. The most dangerous one is the zaire ebolavirus and it is the one that hit guinea in Africa. The disease is so deadly that it has a fatality rate is up to 90 percent. Recently it has spread to 7 different countries which are Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria,
Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain, and United States. Reports say that in the recent outbreak there has been 14,413 cases which resulted in 5,504 deaths. Ebola can be transmitted by direct contact with body fluids or blood from a person who is diagnosed with ebola. However it is a rare disease and usually found in remote areas of Africa so a cure has not been found. According to the healthline website ebola is mainly caused by internal and external bleeding in a body with a high fever. The live science website writes that the origin of the ebola disease was from infected bats. The website also states that you can get ebola from other infected animals such as monkeys, chimpanzees, gorillas, forest antelopes, and porcupines. Ebola can be spread by sneezing or coughing. Direct contact with objects contaminated with the virus, body fluids, or blood from a person infected with ebola can also cause ebola. The body fluids include saliva, sweat, urine, vomit, and feces. Ebola is a very rare disease and it is unlikely to get infected in the United States. However you can increase your risk factors of ebola if you travel to africa and work in areas where ebola
virus outbreak has happen. If you go near body fluids or blood from an infected person you will increase your risk factor. You can also increase your risk factors of ebola if you handle animal research. You may get infected if the animal you are researching has ebola. Other risk factors of ebola include giving medical or personal care to someone who is infected with ebola. Your medic or family member can get infected if they are not wearing the proper equipment such as surgery aprons, masks, and gloves. A person who died from ebola is still contagious. So if you are part of a burial team then you can increase your risk factor of getting infected with ebola. Ebola starts showing symptoms between two to twentyone days after infection. On average it shows after eight to ten days. Ebola first starts out with symptoms similar to the flu with profound weakness. After few days patients start having diarrhea, nausea, low blood pressure, fever, headaches, vomiting, and anemia. Later on the patients starts having internal and external bleeding with confusion. Other symptoms during ebola disease include muscle pain and abdominal pain. Then at the end the patient usually goes into a coma, shock, and dies from multiorgan failure (huffingtonpost.com). However you can recover from ebola depending on how good clinical care you receive and the patients immune system response. At first ebola can be hard to diagnose because the early symptoms of ebola are similar to those of typhoid and malaria. If you are having symptoms of ebola then the doctor has to test you for ebola. To test if you are ebola positive the doctor has to take a blood test and identify specific viruses. If the doctor finds enzymelinked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in your blood then you may be ebola positive.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there are also other tests done to diagnose
ebola. They include virus isolation by cell structure, serum neutralization test, antigencapture detection tests,
