As many may have noticed, there has been a recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is the largest outbreak in history. Due to Ebola being contagious, deadly, and without a cure or vaccination, I decided to start off my entries with this happy topic.
Symptoms generally begin a little over a week after contracting the disease and initially appear flu-like. The symptom that most people associate with Ebola, excessive amounts of bleeding, appears a week after the first symptoms. Death follows shortly after if the patient is not treated. There is no true “cure” for Ebola in the traditional sense. Instead, patients receive supportive treatments. These treatments help with symptoms, but they do not eradicate the virus itself.
New, experimental treatments have been effective in preventing death. Whether or not they are true cures remains to be seen. They are currently being tested on the four Americans who were brought back from West Africa after contracting the disease.
When the news that Ebola patients were being brought back home, it caused some unrest. Understandably, people did not want a sudden Ebola outbreak at home. They did not realize that Ebola is manageable in the developed world. The virus is only transmitted through contact with bodily fluids or contaminated objects. It can be destroyed with heat or bleach. There are professionals in charge of containment and transportation of the patients. We do still need to worry about infected people travelling before they are aware of their illness. We are not, however, in any risk of beginning an epidemic by bringing people back under controlled conditions. Quite the opposite, actually, as we have successfully kept the patients themselves alive, thus providing valuable insight into possible cures.
Efforts to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa are now meeting resistance. Villagers, suspicious that the health workers are actually the ones bringing the disease, are now attacking people. Groups of health workers attempting to raise awareness and preventive measures regarding Ebola have been killed in the villages they wanted to help.
This outbreak highlights serious underlying issues in efforts of the developed world to help underdeveloped regions. The villagers do not understand viruses, and they are afraid. Their fear then makes them suspicious which in turn leads to violence. It is likely that the idea of viruses will need to be introduced more gradually. Additionally, as seen in the Ebola patients being treated in the United States, health workers risk being infected themselves. I believe that the correct course of action is the one that was taken – bring them back to a developed country that has the means of treating them effectively. In doing so, we can also learn more about the disease and develop cures and, hopefully, a vaccine.
There was also a possible Ebola diagnosis in South Sacramento. I live in Sacramento, so it was an exciting couple of days.
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