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Here are the facts.

What is Ebola?

  • Highly contagious form of viral hemorrhagic fever
  • Melts internal organs, causes bodily fluids to pour from every orifice
  • Causes death in up to 90% of all victims
  • Virus stays alive in bodies of the dead for three days
  • 1st identified in 1976, in Africa.The big unknown – how it lives in nature
  • Transmitted by direct contact with the secretions of infected persons
  • No vaccine exists
  • Complicating factors: Fear, lack of protective equipment, phones and transportation, distance from diagnostic labs
  • Hosts: Humans, monkeys, chimpanzees, domestic guinea pigs

 

What does it look like?

The Ebola virus
The Ebola Virus, as
seen under a microscope

 

Where is it found?

  • AfricaMainly in Africa. Primary countries include Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Sudan, The Ivory Coast, Uganda and Zaire

 

 

 

 

How is it treated?

  • Patients must be isolated under barrier nursing conditions
  • No current treatment exists, aside from giving patients supportive therapy. Doctors try to balance a patient's fluids and electrolytes, and keep up their blood oxygen.
  • Everyone around the patient must wear protective clothing – many layers of protection in most cases.


    A nurse 'suits up' outside the Gulu hospital.
    ©2002 Dr. Bonnie Henry


What's the latest thinking on a cure?

  • In March 2002, researchers from the United States National Institutes of Health announced a new discovery. Preliminary findings show that the Ebola virus targets tiny platforms of fat called 'lipid rafts'. These 'rafts' float on top of the outer membrane of human cells. The virus uses the lipid raft as a gateway to those cells, and as a base for launching attacks on other cells. Scientists suspect that using anti-cholesterol or anti-fungal drugs might break up these lipid rafts. That would eliminate the base for the cells' attack on a patient's immune system. The research is published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

    Find more information in our Further Reading section

 

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