Why Ebola is so dangerous.

WHAT is Ebola?Ebola is a viral illness of which the
initial symptoms can include a sudden fever,
intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat,
according to the World Health Organization, WHO.
And that is just the beginning: subsequent stages
are vomiting, diarrhoea and – in some cases – both
internal and external bleeding. The disease infects
humans through close contact with infected
animals, including chimpanzees, fruit bats and
forest antelope.
It then spreads between humans by direct contact
with infected blood, bodily fluids or organs, or
indirectly through contact with contaminated
environments. Even funerals of Ebola victims can be
a risk, if mourners have direct contact with the body
of the deceased. The incubation period can last
from two days to three weeks, and diagnosis is
difficult. The human disease has so far been mostly
limited to Africa, although one strain has cropped up
in The Philippines.
Right precautions
Healthcare workers are at risk if they treat patients
without taking the right precautions to avoid
infection. People are infectious as long as their
blood and secretions contain the virus – in some
cases, up to seven weeks after they recover.
Where does it strike?
Ebola outbreaks occur primarily in remote villages
in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests,
says the WHO. It was first discovered in the
Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976 since when it
has affected countries further east, including
Uganda and Sudan. This outbreak is unusual
because it started in Guinea, which has never
before been affected, and is spreading to urban
areas.
Can cultural practices spread Ebola?
Ebola is spread through close physical contact with
infected people. This is a problem for many in the
West African countries currently affected by the
outbreak, as practices around religion and death
involve close physical contact. Hugging is a normal
part of religious worship in Liberia and Sierra Leone,
and across the region the ritual preparation of
bodies for burial involves washing, touching and
kissing. Those with the highest status in society are
often charged with washing and preparing the body.
For a woman this can include braiding the hair, and
for a man shaving the head.
If a person has died from Ebola, their body will have
a very high viral load. Bleeding is a usual symptom
of the disease prior to death. Those who handle the
body and come into contact with the blood or other
body fluids are at greatest risk of catching the
disease. Medecin Sans Frontiere, MSF, has been
trying to make people aware of how their treatment
of dead relatives might pose a risk to themselves. It
is a very difficult message to get across.
All previous outbreaks were much smaller and
occurred in places where Ebola was already known
– in Uganda and the DR Congo for example. In
those places the education message about avoiding
contact has had years to enter the collective
consciousness. In West Africa, there simply has not
been the time for the necessary cultural shift.
What precautions should I take?
Avoid contact with Ebola patients and their bodily
fluids, the WHO advises. Do not touch anything –
such as shared towels – which could have become
contaminated in a public place. Carers should wear
gloves and protective equipment, such as masks,
and wash their hands regularly. The WHO also
warns against consuming raw bushmeat and any
contact with infected bats or monkeys and apes.
Fruit bats in particular are considered a delicacy in
the area of Guinea where the outbreak started.
In March, Liberia’s health minister advised people to
stop having sex, in addition to existing advice not to
shake hands or kiss. The WHO says men can still
transmit the virus through their semen for up to
seven weeks after recovering from Ebola.
The WHO ruled in August that untested drugs can
be used to treat patients in light of the scale of the
current outbreak. Patients with Ebola frequently
become dehydrated. They should drink solutions
containing electrolytes or receive intravenous fluids.
MSF says this outbreak comes from the deadliest
and most aggressive strain of the virus.
The current outbreak is killing between 50% and
60% of people infected.
It is not known which factors allow some people to
recover while most succumb.
Biopreparat: How Ebola came to be
(Russian: “Biological substance preparation”) was
the Soviet Union’s major biological warfare agency
from the 1970s on. It was a vast, ostensibly civilian,
network of secret laboratories, each of which
focused on a different deadly bioagent. Its 30,000
employees researched and produced pathogenic
weapons for use in a major war.
History and establishment:
Biopreparat was established in 1973 as a “civilian”
continuation of earlier Soviet bio-warfare
programmes (see Soviet biological weapons
program). The project was reportedly initiated by
academician Yuri Ovchinnikov who convinced
General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev that
development of biological weapons was necessary.
A prominent supporter was identified by some
authors in General-Polkovnik Taras Chepura, who
stressed the importance of disguised research. The
research at Biopreparat constituted a blatant
violation by the Soviet Union of the terms of the
Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 which
outlawed biological weapons. Its existence was
steadfastly denied by Soviet officials for decades.
Exposure of Biopreparat in the West: In April 1979, a
major outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in the city of
Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) caused the deaths
of 105 or more Soviet citizens. The Soviets tried to
hush things up, but details leaked out to the West in
1980 when the German newspaper Bild Zeitung
carried a story about the accident. Moscow
described allegations that the epidemic was an
accident at a BW facility as “slanderous
propaganda” and insisted the anthrax outbreak had
been caused by contaminated food.
The first senior Soviet bioweaponeer to defect to the
West was Vladimir Pasechnik (1937–2001) who
alerted Western intelligence in 1989 to the vast
scope of Moscow’s clandestine programme. British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S.
President George H. W. Bush put pressure on Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev to open up Russia’s
germ warfare facilities to a team of outside
inspectors.
Outside inspectors
When the inspectors toured four of the sites in
1991, they were met with denials and evasions.
Production tanks which had obviously been
intended for making enormous quantities of
something were clean and sterile; laboratories had
been stripped of equipment.
Pasechnik’s revelations that the programme was 10
times greater than previously suspected were
confirmed in 1992 with the defection to the United
States of Colonel Kanatjan Alibekov (b. 1950), the
number two scientist for the programme. Alibekov
(now known as Ken Alibek) had been the First
Deputy Director of Biopreparat from 1988 to 1992.
He claimed that development of new strains of
genetically engineered superweapons was still
continuing.
Alibek later wrote the book Biohazard (1999)
detailing publicly his extensive inside knowledge of
the structure, goals, operations and achievements
of Biopreparat. He was also featured in the October
13, 1998 episode of Frontline (PBS TV series).
1990s: The Biopreparat complex suffered with the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then several
large bioweapons production lines have been
officially closed. Its current state is unknown,
however it is likely that Biopreparat and successor
entities continued bioweapons research and
development at least through the 1990s.
Operations: Biopreparat was a system of 18,
nominally civilian, research laboratories and centres
scattered chiefly around European Russia, in which
a small army of scientists and technicians
developed biological weapons such as anthrax,
Ebola, Marburg virus, plague, Q fever, Junin virus,
glanders, and smallpox. It was the largest producer
of weaponized anthrax in the Soviet Union and was
a leader in the development of new bioweapons
technologies.
Courtesy: Wikipedia.org