Word: ebola
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Horrific tropical fevers are an unfortunate fact of life in Central Africa, but this was no ordinary fever. It was the fourth outbreak ever recorded of the dreaded Ebola virus, which resists all medicines and kills up to 90% of its victims. As the full measure of the danger dawned on them, alarmed government officials called for help from international public-health experts in the U.S. and Europe. They closed schools and health clinics in Kikwit, ordered people to stay off the streets, and imposed a quarantine on the city in a desperate attempt to keep the virus from spreading...
...Kinshasa, residents fretted about their relatives and friends in Kikwit-there are no phone links and now no movement between the two cities-and feared that Ebola might breach the quarantine. Says Cornaille Mbala, a senior nurse at Kinshasa's Mama Yemo Hospital: "When this sickness hits you, you die in one week. Of course we are all afraid." And around the world, but especially in the U.S., people sensitized to Ebola's horrors by a spate of books and movies-Richard Preston's chilling best seller The Hot Zone; the TV movie Robin Cook's 'Virus'; the film Outbreak...
...week's end, there were 49 confirmed deaths from Ebola and 50 more suspected-the number was highly uncertain because Kikwit is also dealing with an outbreak of shigellosis, a form of dysentery whose symptoms can easily be confused with Ebola's. While the death toll is certain to rise, since the virus' incubation period lasts up to 21 days, infectious-disease experts doubt that the Ebola will travel much farther than it has already, even within Zaire. Says Dr. Ralph Henderson, an assistant director-general of the World Health Organization: "We are not talking about thousands or tens...
...fact, the Ebola virus is ill-suited to sustaining an epidemic: it kills victims so quickly that they don't have much chance to infect others. Says Henderson: "People who are ill with Ebola are not walking around. They are on their backs." Moreover, the virus is not all that easy to pass along. Unlike the most highly contagious illnesses-tuberculosis or influenza, for example, Ebola can't be transmitted with a sneeze or cough. It's more like AIDS; direct contact with a victim's blood or other body fluids appears to be the only way to catch...
Officials tightened their blockade of Kikwit and four other towns amid reports of people bribing police to let them out of thequarantine area where the deadly Ebola virus has been identified. At least 86 people have been killed so far by the virus. In Kinshasa, a nurse who fled the containment zone was placed in isolation as medical personnel tried to determine whether she is infected. Police had spent most of the day looking for the nurse and a riverboat captain who had travelled to Zaire's capital from Kikwit. The captain was found not to be infected and released...