The Truth about Ebola
Written by Rebecca Andrews, Former Student on Monday, October 20, 2014
Every news station is covering it; every ad is warning about it; every student at SHS is talking about it. The Ebola outbreak has caused citizens across the country to panic.
Rumors are being spread all throughout Snohomish High School about the seriousness of the disease, and not many people are taking the time to check their facts.
There are over 400 health care workers in West Africa that have contracted the virus, and 233 have died as of October 8. 8,000 West Africans have been infected with the virus, with over 3,800 deaths. However, the outbreak has only reached 17 people outside of West Africa, and only eight inside the United States as of October 14.
At the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, one of the two people diagnosed have recovered. In Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, two out the three have recovered; in Dallas, Texas, out of the three diagnosed Ebola patients, one has died. All the patients had direct contact with West Africa through either their nationality or their work as either an aid worker, a missionary, a doctor, an NBC cameraman, or a hospital worker.
The only fatal victim from Ebola in the United States was Thomas E. Duncan, a visitor to Dallas, Texas from Liberia. Duncan arrived in the U.S. after being checked for symptoms in Liberia on September 9. He developed symptoms on September 24, then went to the hospital on September 25. He was sent home the same day. On September 28, he was admitted and placed in isolation at the Dallas hospital, and on the 30, doctors confirmed that Duncan had Ebola. He died on November 8. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitored everyone with whom Duncan came in contact with until it was certain that they did not have the disease.
The CDC is stressing that the disease isn’t contagious unless the carrier is showing symptoms. Ebola is spread through direct contact with body fluids such as blood, vomit, or saliva being sprayed through sneezes and coughs. If someone has Ebola, he or she will start to show symptoms within two to 21 days. The symptoms are very unpleasant. Due to an unexplained hemorrhage, the patient will start to show bleeding either in vomit, urine, through the eyes or moth, or under the skin. Patients may experience severe headaches, a high fever, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, and/or abdominal pain. While those symptoms are happening, the internal blood vessels will start to leak fluid. The blood pressure will drop so drastically that many major organs such as the heart, kidney, or liver will fail. Ebola is fatal to 60-90 percent of its victims.
There are currently no ways to prevent through vaccinations or treat Ebola that are approved by the FDA. The CDC is carefully sketching out worse case/best case scenarios; nobody knows exactly how much destruction this disease will cause. Already, the disease that made its first appearance in the horrific 1976 outbreak which claimed 431 lives is being shadowed by the 3,800 deaths the 2014 outbreak has caused. The United States has deployed over 4,000 military people to West Africa and constructed more than 17 Ebola treatment centers, despite the difficulty in getting the necessary heavy equipment to the areas. They are also carefully screening several American airports that receive passengers from West Africa in order to provide maximum protection from the disease.
The Ebola outbreak is very serious, but it’s also important to recognize that a lot of trained professionals are working tirelessly to help prevention. “We recognize that even a single case of Ebola in the United States seems threatening,” Beth Bell, MD, MPH, Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases says. “But the simple truth is that we do know how to stop the spread of Ebola between people.”
The CDC gives an important warning against prevention; make sure that you stay clean. Wash your hands, and be careful if you travel outside of the United States, or in any of the infected states. They say this is the best prevention of the disease right now.
