Word: ebola
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Ebola is just one of several viruses to have emerged from the jungle in the past few decades; others include Lassa and Marburg in Africa, and Sabia, Junin and Machupo in South America. But the most insidious of all, of course, is the AIDS virus, HIV. It probably originated in Africa as well, but unlike Ebola, it was ideally suited to spread around the globe. It kills so slowly and leaves victims without symptoms for so long that they can infect many others before dying...
That means that most people, especially those outside Zaire, have little to fear from Ebola. Says Dr. Peter Piot, who investigated the first Ebola outbreak in 1976 and heads the United Nations aids program: "It's theoretically feasible that an infected person from Kikwit could go to Kinshasa, get on a plane to New York, fall ill, and present a transmission risk there. But even if this were to happen, it would likely stop there...
...health-care workers who will continue to face the greatest danger in the Ebola outbreak. Under ordinary conditions, even an operation wouldn't necessarily put doctors and nurses at undue risk. But in Zaire, sanitary conditions are a luxury. Patients in even the biggest hospitals lie on the floor, or on soiled mattresses; doctors and nurses rarely have a chance to wash their hands, and sterilized instruments are almost unheard of. Says nurse Mbala: "We have no masks, no gowns, nothing, nothing at all. If the virus comes [to Kinshasa], we have no way to protect ourselves." In the three...
...there is still no answer to the crucial question of how Kimfumu came by the virus in the first place. As a lab technician, he may have been exposed to a contaminated blood sample, but the ultimate origin of Ebola remains a mystery. Scientists suspect that it has probably circulated in wild animals such as rodents for years, and only makes the jump into humans when the two populations come into contact. Observes Yale epidemiologist Dr. Robert Ryder: "These viruses basically say to man, 'You stick to your territory and I'll stick to mine.' But then man begins...
...virus that is both deadly to man and transmitted in the air?" It needn't even be a new organism, since viruses undergo mutations every so often. Sometimes they change into a more harmless form--but sometimesthey get more virulent. Which means that the next time Ebola virus emerges from the jungle, it might be much harder to control. -- Reported by Bruce Crumley/Paris, Scott Norvell/Atlanta and Andrew Purvis/Kinshasa