KNOWING MORE ABOUT EBOLA VIRUS DISEASE

    The Ebola Virus Disease was first associated with an outbreak of 318 cases of a hemorrhagic disease in Zaire. Of the 318 cases, 280 of them died and died quickly. That same year, 1976, 284 people in Sudan also became infected with the virus and 156 died.The Zaire strain of Ebola virus has a mortality rate of 88 percent, which is higher than  the Sudan strain of Ebola.    This deadly disease we are facing today is the most devastating and biggest Ebola epidemic of the modern times, There is fear, there is a front line, the epidemic is advancing and there is a collapse of infrastructure.

    Fear is complicating the huge increase in aid that is needed: food for people in areas that have been cordoned off; laboratory supplies to test for the disease; gloves, face masks and gowns to protect health workers; body bags for the dead; bedsheets to replace those that must be burned. Airlines have canceled flights that could have carried in such supplies, despite assurances from the W.H.O. that properly screened passengers pose little risk. Positions on aid teams remain unfilled. There was an acute need for materials as well as for more human resources  and not just experts and bureaucrats, but also the kind of person who is ready to “roll up his\her sleeves.
     For many, the image is fearful to a degree that it makes it very hard indeed for them to do anything other than think about their safety and the safety of those they love.
     But over the past week a more muscular effort to fight the outbreak began lumbering to life.Hundreds of workers for Doctors Without Borders have fought the outbreak since March.Information materials,health workers advices and health warning plus safety were continously raising awareness on this deadly disease known as  Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

Knowing more about ebola virus disease is something we should'nt ignore...

  SYMPTOMS
    Ebola generally starts with flu-like symptoms. This include high fever, severe headache, muscle pain, weakness, abdominal pain, lack of appetite, typically
occur in the first stages of the illness, before the person gets sicker and starts to experience more severe symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea and low blood pressure.Some people may succumb to the illness before it gets to that point, some may just have bleeding of the gums, or bruising. As the disease gets worse, it causes bleeding inside the body, as well as from the eyes, ears, and nose . Some people will vomit or cough up blood, have bloody diarrhea, and get a rash as central nervous system damage. People who die from infection with Ebola virus usually end up dying from multi-organ failure and shock. "The shock is from the bleeding , you're bleeding in different parts of your body and the blood is leaking out of your blood vessels,"

  INCUBATION
    Ebola viruses have an incubation period of 2 to 21 days. The onset of illness is sudden and harsh. Infected persons develop fever, severe headaches and muscle aches, and loss of appetite. Within a few days the virus causes a condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, which is marked by both blood clots and hemorrhaging. In the case of Ebola, clots are concentrated in the liver, spleen, brain, and other internal organs, forcing capillaries to bleed into surrounding tissue. Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea with blood and mucus, conjunctivitis, and sore throat soon follow. A maculopapular rash (discoloured elevations of the skin) appears on the trunk and quickly spreads to the limbs and head. The patient is then beset by spontaneous bleeding from body orifices and any breaks in the skin, such as injection sites, and within the gastrointestinal tract, skin, and internal organs. Death is usually brought on by hemorrhaging, shock, or renal failure and occurs within 8 to 17 days.

  DIAGNOSIS
    Diagnosing Ebola Virus Disease in an individual who has been infected for only a few days is difficult, because the early symptoms, such as red eyes and a skin rash, are nonspecific to ebolavirus infection and are seen often in patients with more commonly occurring diseases. Doctors may test to rule out other diseases like typhoid fever, relapsing fever, cholera, leptopirosis, plague, malaria, hepatitis meningitis and other viral haemorrhagic fever.Tests of blood and tissues also can diagnose Ebola. If a person has the early symptoms of Ebola Virus Disease and there is reason to believe , the patient should be isolated and public health professionals notified. Samples from the patient can then be collected and tested to confirm infection.Samples are extremely dangerous and testing should be done under maximum biological containment condition.

  SPREAD
    You can’t get Ebola Virus Disease from air, water, or food. A person who has Ebola but has no symptoms can’t spread the disease, either.Ebola Virus Disease is not known to infect people through the air, you must come into contact with the virus somehow in order to be at risk for infection. Ebola Virus Disease isn’t as contagious as more common viruses like colds, influenza, or measles. It spreads to people by contact with infected skin and bodily fluids  of an infected animal, like a monkey, chimp, or fruit bat as well as through contact with surfaces or objects contaminated by those fluids.

The virus has also been detected in the organs of patients after recovery from the fever. In men, the virus may remain infectious in semen for as long as two months following return to health. Unsanitary conditions and lack of adequate medical supplies may be factors in the spread of the disease. Burial rituals that involve close contact with the body of a person who has died from the disease also can result in the spread of Ebola. People who are providing care for a household member like cleaning up vomit or diarrhea, and getting into contact with fluids.That virus gets into their own  body through the nose, mouth and such. Then it moves from person to person the same way.
     Ebola Virus Disease spread from country to country when people travel. But there are ways to prevent people from coming to airports with the disease. Airline crews are trained to spot the symptoms of Ebola in passengers flying from places where the virus is found. Crews are told to quarantine anyone who looks infected.

    The spread of ebola viruses can be contained by barrier nursing, handling of infected blood and tissue in isolated laboratory units, and proper decontamination of reusable equipment.

  TREATMENT
    There is no known treatment for Ebola Virus Disease, although immune plasma may be beneficial. Current therapy consists of maintenance of fluid and electrolyte balance and administration of blood and plasma to control bleeding.
Drugs designed to disrupt ebola virus replication have been developed and tested in Ebola-infected monkeys. The treatment, which in 2010 was approved for safety trials in humans, was promising for persons who become accidentally infected in laboratory or hospital settings. Standard treatment for Ebola Virus Disease is still limited to treating the symptoms as they appear and supportive care can help recovery. This consists of
          .balancing the patient’s fluids and electrolytes
          .maintaining their oxygen status and blood pressure
          .treating them for any complicating infections

Ebola  Virus Disease has no treatment and vaccine, the only way to alleviate or reduce it risk is by raising awareness.We need to educate the masses on how to avoid infections, they should also endeavour to report ebola virus cases  to the authority.
The current outbreak is killing between 50% and 60% of people infected.

   PREVENTION
     Few primary prevention measures have been established and no vaccine exists. Healthcare workers must be able to recognize a case of Ebola and be ready to use practical viral hemorrhagic fever isolation precautions or barrier nursing techniques because as the cases of the disease do appear, risk of transmission within health care settings is increased. They should also have the capability to request diagnostic tests or prepare samples for shipping and testing elsewhere.        

Barrier nursing techniques include:
         .wearing of protective clothing (such as masks, gloves, gowns, and goggles)
         .using infection-control measures (such as complete equipment sterilization and routine use of disinfectant)
         .isolating patients with Ebola from contact with unprotected persons.
The aim of all of these techniques is to avoid contact with the blood or secretions of an infected patient. If a patient with Ebola dies, direct contact with the body of the deceased patient should be avoided.

The prevention of Ebola Virus Disease presents many challenges. If you must travel to an area with known Ebola cases, make sure to do the following:
         Practice careful hygiene. Avoid contact with blood and body fluids.
         Do not handle items that may have come in contact with an infected person’s blood or body fluids.
         Avoid funeral or burial rituals that require handling the body of someone who has died from Ebola.

         Avoid contact with animals and raw meat. Fruit bats are considered to be virus' natural host.The human to human control is excellent, but it is important to   let the general public know of the second risk route, the animal to human   level. Fruit bats, which are prone to carrying the Ebola virus could fly out of the country to the affected countries – Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea and possibly return with the virus. Though infected bats are immuned to the virus, they secreted the virus contained in their saliva on fruits like mangoes, oranges, nuts and berries they consume. Animals like pigs, gorillas, porcupines, antelopes, dogs and   even humans, who in turn consume these infested fruits were not spared by the virus.To avoid contracting the disease,  inhabitants within the rural areas should refrain from consuming fruits, which bats had already fed on. Fruits which have been dropped and probably eaten by these fruit bats should not be   eaten.

        Avoid hospitals where Ebola patients are being treated. After you return, monitor your health for 21 days and seek medical care immediately if you develop.

  GOOD NEWS and BAD NEWS
     Promising vaccines for Ebola Virus Disease close to being available, say US experts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has ruled that experimental drugs can be used to treat patients infected with the Ebola virus in West Africa.
The WHO said it was ethical in light of the scale of the outbreak and high number of deaths - more than 1,000 people have died in West Africa.Dr Tom Frieden, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that while there were only a "handful of doses" of experimental drugs, there were some "promising vaccines" close to being available to treat the disease.People were hoping the insights obtained throughout the course of experiment  will serve as a blueprint on how to treat the hundreds of patients on the Africa continent currently battling for their lives.

    But drugs based on monoclonal antibodies usually cost a lot,at least tens of thousands of dollars. This is obviously far more than poor people in poor nations can afford to pay, and a tiny company won’t enthusiastically give away its small supply of drug for free. It is likely that if they were going to donate drugs, it would be to people who would command a lot of press attention and, thus, investors and government money for further research, which is to say, not to poor Liberians, Nigerians or Guineans.

   UPDATE
     The current Ebola outbreak in Africa is dominating headlines globally rather than any of the other deadly diseases which exist, it's because people in the west have forgotten what it is like to deal with an untreatable disease.
We have simply forgotten what it is like to live under threat of such infectious and deadly diseases, and forgotten what it means to fear them.Death comes in the form of either organ failure or low blood pressure caused by the extreme loss of fluids.As the disease gets worse, it causes bleeding inside the body, as well as from the eyes, ears, and nose . Some people will vomit or cough up blood, have bloody diarrhea, and get a rash as central nervous system damage.
Such fear-inducing descriptions have been doing the rounds in the media lately.

GUINEA

      World Health Organisation (WHO) Tuesday said the Ebola virus-hit Nigeria and Guinea have showed encouraging signs to contain the outbreak.The situation in Guinea is  under control, the UN agency said.
Whole counties and districts have been sealed off in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and Guinea imposed some internal travel restrictions

NIGERIA

      The Ebola Virus Disease is spreading fastest in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but the U.N. health agency reported encouraging signs that it is slowing in Guinea, and there is hope that Nigeria has managed to contain the disease to about a dozen cases.Nigeria’s health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said Tuesday that a fifth person had died of Ebola, but all of Nigeria’s reported cases have been people in direct contact with a Liberian-American man who arrived already infected.
The Ebola Virus Disease cases in Nigeria are linked to the late Liberian government employee, Patrick Sawyer, who brought the disease to the city of Lagos in July.

      The U.N. health agency also warned of shortages of food, water and other essential supplies in West Africa’s population centers.

LIBERIA

       World Health Organization said the death toll is rising most quickly in Liberia, which now accounts for at least 576 of the fatalities
       Riot police and soldiers acting on their president’s orders used scrap wood and barbed wire to seal off 50,000 people inside their Liberian slum , trying to contain the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak that has killed 1,350 people and counting across West Africa. Hundreds of slum residents clashed with the gunmen, furious at being blamed and isolated by their government.
       Days earlier, residents ransacked a screening center where people in contact with Ebola victims were being monitored. They dragged out sheets and mattresses covered with blood and feces, accusing the government of bringing sick people into their neighborhood. Dozens of potential carriers were taken elsewhere in the city.
       President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf responded by imposing a nighttime curfew and ordering "quarantines" of West Point and Dolo Town, densely populated slum outside the capital. She also ordered movie theaters, nightclubs and other gathering places shut, stopped ferry service to the peninsula and deployed a coast guard boat to patrol the surrounding waters.
    "There will be no movements in and out of those areas . Additional sanctions were necessary because her citizens failed to heed health warnings,"Sirleaf said in a national address .
"We have been unable to control the spread due to continued denials, cultural burying practices, disregard for the advice of health workers and disrespect for the warnings by the government. Fellow citizens, these measures are meant to save lives "she said.
      She didn’t say how long the blockades would last, or how people trapped inside would get food, water or other help meanwhile.

SIERRALEONE

       Sierra Leone voted to pass a new amendment to its health act, imposing possible jail time for anyone caught hiding an Ebola patient, a practice the World Health Organization believes has contributed to a major underestimation of the current outbreak.The new law, an update to the country’s 1960 Public Health Act, was passed on and imposes prison terms of up to two years for violators.The measure was necessary to compel residents to cooperate with government officials,because some residents had resisted steps to combat Ebola including the construction of isolation centers in their communities.

      Sierra Leone has been hit hard by the current outbreak, recording at least 910 cases and 392 deaths, according to figures released by the World Health Organization.A total of 2,615 infections and 1,427 deaths have been recorded across West Africa.

EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL in ATLANTA, USA

      The second American missionary doctor, Nancy Writebol, who was medically evacuated from Liberia on August 4th to Emory University’s Hospital in Atlanta, is making great strides on a strong road to recovery.She is the second American Ebola patient to receive the experimental ZMapp (Ebola Serum).Her path to recovery remains a prominent case report in the medical community as she could provide a unique window into how the human body responds over the weeks and years to this new drug.
      Nancy is in high spirits and was briefly united with her husband David on Sunday, who just completed a 21 day quarantine to ensure that he did not have Ebola.
      Dr Kent Brantley,American doctor who contracted the Ebola virus while working in West Africa and the medical director for Samaritan Purse’s Ebola Consolidated Case Management Center in Monrovia, who was the first Ebola patient to medically evacuated from Liberia and to receive ZMapp is also reported to be doing very well.Dr. Kent Brantly was released, fully recovered, from Emory University Hospital  Aug. 21, and he spoke out, telling reporters how he’s "thrilled to be alive."
      While three Liberian medics are also recovering well.

OTHER PLACES

      Senegal also banned flights and ships from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone  however, humanitarian flights would not be affected.Senegal's capital, Dakar, is a regional hub for West Africa and many doctors and medical supplies arriving from Europe or the US would pass through there before going to the affected countries.
Senegal first closed its border with Guinea in March when the outbreak started.
      It was reopened in May after the situation in Guinea seemed to have stabilised but there has been a recent increase in the number of cases in the country.
   
      Cameroon and South Africa have also imposed travel bans.

      Ivory Coast has closed its land borders with Ebola Virus Disease  affected West African neighbours Guinea and Liberia in an attempt to prevent the world's deadliest outbreak of the virus from spreading to its territory.

      Kenya has already banned flights from Sierra Leone and Liberia as a precautionary measure to prevent the  Ebola Virus Disease from entering their territory.

      Ghana could be forced to ban flights from Ebola Virus Disease  affected countries once the spillover rate becomes threatening in West Africa.Ghana has announced preventive measures, which include the setting up of isolation centres, provision of protective gear for frontline health officials and the installation of a thermal thermometer at the Kotoko International Airport, to monitor the disease.
      In Ghana, there have been rumors circulating that the government is in cahoots with the hospitals, pharmacies and the Noguchi Memorial Institute Research Institute to cover-up positive tests from suspected cases.THE PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY OF GHANA calls on the National Security apparatus to immediately investigate the source of the voice/tape and bring any person(s) behind it to face the full rigors of the law.

      As of now some areas already are beginning to experience supply shortages, including fuel, food,water and other essential supplies in West Africa’s population centers, as airlines and shipping companies curtail services to the affected countries.  “WHO is working with the U.N. World Food Program to ensure adequate food and supplies.

     The outbreak is social problem as well as a public health crisis.  Fear remains the most difficult barrier to overcome, with people hiding family members suspected of being infected, and people fleeing treatment centers and falling prey to "witchcraft or miracle cures." May God bless us all and save Africa and the rest of the world.

NEWS UPDATE:
    Officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) say that a second, separate outbreak of the deadly virus has occurred in the country. DRC Health Minister Felix Numbi said that two of eight people who died from a “hemorrhagic fever” last week have been diagnosed with a strain of the disease in postmortem lab tests. The death toll of the sudden epidemic in the country’s Equateur province has reached 13 in total.
   "This epidemic has nothing to do with the one in West Africa," said Numbi. "The experience acquired during the six previous epidemics of Ebola will contribute to the containing of this illness.”
Numbi said that medical cordons have been erected around the town of Gera, where the patients were identified.
    Previously, ZMapp was hailed as a potential cure for the illness, after two American missionaries beat Ebola, which has a 47 percent survival rate, after being given the drug. A 75-year-old Spanish priest treated with ZMapp died last week. The Liberian Abrahim Borbor, a senior doctor at the Monrovia JFK hospital where dozens of staff have been infected, deceased on Monday. He was one of three Africans treated with the US-made pharmaceutical substance, but the fate of the others remains unknown.
    While the success rate seems to give lie to the idea that it is a catch-all wonder drug, further live experiments are not imminent, as the drug manufacturer, Mapp, says it cannot produce more portions of the serum for months.
    Meanwhile, Japanese company Toyama Chemical offered its own alternative antidote to the viral illness, a new anti-flu drug favipiravir. The WHO has encouraged manufacturers to re-purpose existing drugs to fight Ebola, and the Japanese pharmaceuticals makers, which is a subsidiary of Fujifilm, says that it is in possession of sufficient stocks to treat at least 20,000 patients. The efficaciousness of favipiravir depends on the similarities between the biological spread mechanisms of flu and Ebola and previous trials on mice, but no certified research on humans.
     The UN says that the reasons for why the disease continues to flourish concern both doctors and patients in West Africa. Relatives of those infected hide them or claim other illnesses to avoid being shunned, and refuse to transport Ebola victims to hospitals.