EbolaBy: Miguel Lopez

What is Ebola?

The Zaire Ebola Virus (commonly known as Ebola) is the cause of the disease Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) which cause unstoppable bleeding. The virus has a high death rate of 90%.

It was named after the Ebola river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was the first area to have an Ebola outbreak in a mission hospital near the river in Yambuku, Zaire.

Road to Discovery

Dr. Ngoy Mushola was the first known individual to describe with written records the Ebola Virus . The doctor traveled to the area of the outbreak so he could see the virus in action. He wrote entire documents about the virus, and exposed himself for the sake of knowledge.

Diagnosis

A person can be diagnosed with ebola if he/she has:

Heavy bleeding from body openings ( eyes, nose, mouth, genitalia)

Internal skin bleeding

Bleeding eyes

Symptoms

Identifying symptoms that indicate an Ebola infection is difficult, since the symptoms it has are also found in other diseases such as thyroid fever, and malaria .

If any of the symptoms are found in a patient, then he might be suspected of having contracted the virus and become quarantined until it is known what exactly is going on with the patient.

Symptoms include:

 fever headache joint and muscle aches sore throat and weakness

After 6 weeks it is followed by:

Bloody Diarrhea Heavy vomiting stomach pain rash red eyes Hiccups Internal and external

bleeding may occur in some patients

Treatment

There is no known treatment to cure the desease yet but scientists are desperately figuring out one because of the threat that it might be used as a chemical weapon

The supportive treatment involves replacing fluids that have been lost to vomiting and diarrhea, and being quarantined.

Even with supportive treatment the patient is not expected to live, although there have been records of people surviving the deadly disease.

Prevention

To pervent further spread of the virus, patients still alive with the virus will be quarantined far away from the population, while dead bodies will be burned to prevent the virus from moving to a new host after its original has died.

Death of a patient

After the death of the patient, the virus will continue to spread throughout the body until the body becomes a total mess.

if the virus cannot find another host, it will eventually die off .

Replica of a face showing the final stages of the disease