Why the global alarm about Ebola?

file581269800691-300x225Ebola Virus Disease is a serious, normally deadly ailment, with its death rate above 90%. The disease afflicts humans as well as animals like primates and a certain species of bats. In the current crisis that has enfolded West Africa; substantial cases have been traced to human-to-human transference. Infections are ascribable to direct handling via ruptured skin or mucous peripheral layer or other body fluids and secretions of contaminated persons. Health experts are poised to be exposed and infected if they handle patients without proper shielding wear or failing on counter measures.
It is unsafe to care for persons who have been afflicted with the ailment. One should visit a hospital right away if you suspect you have been infected or another person. Nevertheless, individuals who handle patients should have undergone appropriate training, elimination and disposing dead bodies, essential equipment like gloves and gowns for treatment, and details on the correct steps that facilitate militating against transmittance and infections to other persons.
Besides, transmission has taken place in scenarios where persons not properly equipped have sought to dispose dead bodies in funerals rituals. Ceremonies where mourners have directly handled dead bodies of infected people have contributed to debilitating suffused infections. Patients who have succumbed to the Ebola virus should be handled with effective protective wear, gloves and ought to be buried instantaneously. WHO recommends that they should be dealt with by expertise case management professionals, aptly equipped to dispose dead bodies.
People are contagious if their bodily fluids have the virus embedded. Subsequently, infected people should undergo meticulous monitoring from health experts and subjected to laboratory assessment to make sure the virus is not in their bodies before leaving quarantine areas. As long as medical officers have given a positive nod the patient is not affected, they are no longer a threat. However, men may still communicate the virus as it survives in semen for up to three months. Discernibly, a male patient should have protected sex or abstain altogether for up to seven weeks. Another way is contacting animals that are infected with Ebola and may lead to inexorable human-to-human transmission.
The most vulnerable persons against the backdrop of an Ebola epidemic include health-workers, people proximate to infected victims and mourners who handle dead bodies in the course of burial ceremonies. Exposure to the viral disease may be countered via the use of preventive measures in isolated settings.
The patent symptoms intimating infection include starting of fever, overly weakness, headaches muscle pain, and sores in the throat. Next the patient may vomit, diarrhea, diminishing the function of the kidney and liver, and bleeding internally or externally. Laboratory determination encompasses diminished white blood cells, low platelet count and elevation of liver enzymes. The virus takes from two to twenty-one days to incubate and morph to the aforesaid symptoms. The patients are communicable upon the onset of symptoms. However, they pose no threat during the incubation time. Similarly, unverified claims and hype are only poised to worsen a fatal situation, Ebola Virus Disease contamination may only be ascertained via laboratory tests.