Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Ebola Virus Disease
- What is Ebola?
- Severe, often fatal disease in humans
- Formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic
fever
- First appeared in 1976 in two outbreaks
- In Nzara, Sudan and Yambuku in
Democratic Republic of Congo
- Takes its name from the
Ebola River, near which it
first appeared
- Mainly found in tropical Central and West
Africa
- How is it transmitted?
- Virus lives in fruit bats
- Transmitted to human pop. through close
contact with blood, sweat, secretions and other
bodily fluids
- Human to human transmission
- Direct contact
- Broken skin or mucous membranes
- Indirect contact
- Environments contaminated with fluids
- Not contagious until symptoms begin to show
- West African burial ceremonies in which
mourners have direct contact with the body of the
deceased
- What does it do to the body?
- Beginning symptoms
- Fever, muscle pain and sore throat
- Rapidly escalates to vomiting,
diarrhoea and internal and external
bleeding
- Incubation period: two to twenty-one days
- Early treatment improves a patient's chance of
survival
- It can take 21 days to start showing symptoms
- Recent News
- Outbreak began February 2014
- Guinea, Liberia and
Sierra Leone
- Sierra Leone
- Poor infection control and mistrust in the health
services allowed the virus to reach from the remote
jungles to the heart of the coastal capital Freetown
- Liberia and Sierra Leona declared
states of public emergency
- Army can now move in to enforce
quarantine zones
- Airlines
- West Africa airline Asky has suppended flights
to the capitals of both Liberia and Sierra Leone
- Liberia
- To close schools and consider quarantining
some communities
- Killed more than 700
people since February
- Transmission fears
- Fear across the world of the disease
spreading outside of Africa
- Airlines are screening people
coming from that area
- Scientists say there is no real threat
- Disease not highly contagious until the
effected person is sick
- Not transmitted through the air
- First world countries have better health care systems and
are ready for outbreaks like this one, unlike Sierra Leone
- How is it treated?
- No vaccine or cure
- Testing to confirm the virus must be done
with the highest level of biohazard
protection
- Several vaccines are being tested
but none are available for clinical use
- Patients frequently severely dehydrated and
require oral rehydration
- Families lose faith in Western
Medicine and take the patients
home to traditional village healers
- Leads to the spread of the disease
- 60% survival rate