Key Ebola Facts
Key facts
Ebola Virus Disease/EVD, antecedently regarded to as Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever is a dire, normally deadly ailment in humans. The virus is transmittable from person-to-person and wild animals to humans. Due to the lethal and contagious nature of the virus, community participation is core to ensure outbreaks are contained in time. Feasible Ebola-related epidemic control depends on adopting various means of interventions, including case management, scrutiny and surveillance and contact follow ups, proper laboratory services, innocuous burials and mobilization of the members of the community.
Timely supportive measures including rehydration, countering symptoms enhances survival. In the meanwhile, no licensed or concrete treatment has been empirically shown to negate or weaken the virus hitherto. Nevertheless, a wide spectrum of blood, immunologic and drug therapeutic diseases has been predicated. Likewise there are no approved Ebola vaccines though potential cohorts are undergoing assessment.
Background Information
The Ebola viruses lead to fatal, dire ailment that is normally macabre if left untreated. The virus first fulminated in 1976 where twin outbursts, a case in Sudan and the other in the DRC Congo. The latter case appeared in a hamlet adjacent to the Ebola River, from which the deadly ailment name was coined from.
Suffice to say, though the disease has had intermittent outbreaks in Africa with substantial death tolls skyrocketing in West Africa in 2014, health workers from the west have also been contaminated in the course of interventions. The case hitherto is the most severe and intricate since its discovery in 1976. The 2014 cases aforesaid have been multifarious with numerous deaths reported since then. The virus has since spilled over to adjoining states, beginning in Guinea then suffusing across borders to adjacent Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal and Liberia.
The most seriously afflicted countries, Guinea, Liberia along Sierra Leone have inefficient health systems, devoid of manpower and infrastructural facilities, against the backdrop of incessant turmoil that had haunted these countries recently. This prompted the World Health Organization to declare an emergency situation at the international plane. Nevertheless, apart from the state-to-state transmissions across borders, an isolated case of the Ebola outburst was detected in the DRC Congo within Equateur.
The Ebola virus family taxon Filoviridae encompasses triple genera, viz. Ebolavirus, Marburgvirus, and Cuevavirus. So far, five species have been ramified including Tai Forest, Zaire, Reston, Bundibugyo and Sudan. The viruses have been ascribed with enormous outbursts in Africa; however, the species that has recently unleashed horrendous deaths is the Zaire species.
Supportive counter-rehydration including oral and intravenous fluids, intervention to treat symptoms has been predicated to enhance victim survival. There is hitherto no evidenced treatment offered for Ebola disease. Nevertheless, a wide spectrum of potential measures including blood packages, immunologic and drug therapies are undergoing evaluation.
It can be hard to make a distinction of EVD from various infectious ailments like malaria, fevers or meningitis along others. Diagnostic confirmations of the symptoms caused by the disease are attainable via a number of approaches, including electron microscopy, virus segregation by cellular culture, serum neutralization assessment, antigen-capture discovery tests, and immunosorbent assay of antibody-capture and RT-PCR assessment.
Samples extracted from infected persons are overly hazardous biologically; laboratory tests should only be undertaken midst optimal bio-containment conditions.