Fuente: REALscience
Expuesto el: lunes, 30 de julio de 2012 18:32
Autor: Michael Bradbury
Asunto: Ebola Virus Spreads across Uganda
| They’re the words no one in infectious disease wants to hear. Ebola virus spreads. But that appears to be what’s happening in Uganda after a month of uncertainty.
Ebola Virus under a Microscope When a deadly virus in Uganda killed seven and infected another seven in early July, many suspected the deadly Ebola virus. And now as the last of the original infected has died health officials confirm it is the Ebola virus at work but a strain that is harder to diagnose. As news about the disease trickled out to the public the hospital where the patients were brought emptied as other patients fled, deciding to take their chances outside. Officials in the Kibaale district where the outbreak emerged tried to calm rising fears at the same time they were warning that more people could become infected after close-contact exposure to someone with the virus. The Kibaale district is the birthplace of Ebola in Uganda. Situated along the Ebola River by the border with the DR Congo where the disease emerged from the jungle in the 1970s it has killed over 70 percent of people it infects. There is no treatment or cure for the deadly virus, which scientists believe is passed from monkey to human through blood exposure or by eating infected bush meat. This is the fourth Ugandan outbreak since 2000 when the virus killed 224 people. At least 42 people died in 2007 and one person contracted Ebola last year. Ebola begins with a high-grade fever and muscle weakness then leads to vomiting, diarrhea, and kidney problems. In some cases a rash and both internal and external bleeding are common. Bleeding through the eyes is one of the most horrific symptoms of the deadly virus. The current outbreak didn’t have the telltale signs of Ebola so it took health officials a month to confirm the disease.
Major Ebola Outbreaks in Africa The Zaire Ebola strain is the deadliest while the Sudan Ebola strain — believed to be responsible for the current outbreak — can be confused with other flu-like illnesses at first. A third Bundibugyo Ebola virus was responsible for the deaths in 2007 and 2008. And the Ivory Coast Ebola virus is a fourth strain that doctors have discovered but there was only one case of that strain in 1994. The World Health Organization reports that at least 14 people have died in this outbreak while 20 are infected. Those numbers are expected to rise in the next few days as more infected people start arriving at area hospitals. The Wall Street Journal reported that one infected person was taken 125 miles to Kampala, raising fears of an outbreak in the nation’s capitol. But the WHO says that no one in Kampala has been infected. Later Uganda’s health minister says the man referred to the hospital in Kampala died in the Kibaale district before he could be moved. In a state broadcast on Monday, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni urged people to avoid touching each other since Ebola can be spread by direct contact to bodily fluids, including saliva and blood. Then he said that Ebola had reached the capitol where seven doctors and 13 health workers were quarantined after being exposed to one or two cases of the virus, which killed a woman in the city’s Mulago Hospital. That woman is believed to be a health worker who had helped bury the dead in the Kibaale district. After her three-month old baby died from Ebola she traveled to Kamapala where she later died herself.
Health Workers Treat Ebola Patient in Kibaale District Hospital Nine of the first 14 deaths were in the same family in the same village in the Kibaale district. While most people look to primates as the natural disease reservoir some scientists are focused on fruit bats. The nocturnal animals are immune to Ebola so could play a role in its transmission. People are also known to have caught the virus from contact with live and dead gorillas, chimpanzees, monkeys and a forest antelope called a duiker. The WHO, Doctors without Borders and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control swooped in to help contain the Ugandan outbreak. A spokesman for the CDC tells CNN, “These outbreaks have a tendency to stamp themselves out, if you will, if we can get in and… stop the chain of transmission.” Because the Ebola virus is so deadly, it kills patients before they have a chance to spread the disease, making it a rather inefficient disease vector. Another six patients have been admitted to the hospital that houses all the suspected Ebola cases in the Kibaale district, suspected of having the deadly virus. So though health officials finally know what to do to handle this crisis, more people will probably be infected before the outbreak runs its course.
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