Word: ebola
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...virus can be passed from one person to another a number of ways--primarily through direct contact. Scientists have recently isolated Ebola viruses from the sweat, blood, saliva and lung tissue of those sorry individuals autopsied during the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Zaire. That epidemic was brought under control through a strategy that sought to limit the skin-to-skin contacts between infected individuals and their healthy, living caretakers...
...take-home lesson of the 1995 epidemic was simple: poor, under-resourced hospitals in which basic elements of public health are ignored serve as vectors for epidemics. There never would have been an Ebola epidemic in Kikwit had there not been a looted, decrepit hospital into which the first handful of cases were admitted. Once inside a facility that lacked any modicum of hygienic practices the virus spread rapidly, first claiming large numbers of health care workers, and then their patients...
...epidemic--five months after it began, illustrating a failure in global disease surveillance--simply implemented classic early-20th-century public health measures. No high-tech solutions were needed: hand washing, quarantine, cessation of funeral practices, contact tracing and public education about the virus were sufficient to conquer Ebola...
...large Zaire outbreaks Ebola emerged in areas so remote that there was little, if any, threat of spread to other countries, including the U.S. Gulu, however, is connected to Uganda's capital by a paved highway, and flights from the now-prospering Kampala depart daily to London, Paris, Johannesburg, Nairobi and other African locales. The threat of spread in this case is a bit more real...
...reappearance of the Ebola virus does not signal such a need. Rather, it is warning us that we ignore the essential public health needs of the world's poorest nations at our own peril. Unless the wealthy world is prepared to assist in the development of strong infrastructures in the poor world, microbial diseases will remain a threat to us all. Investment need not be prohibitively massive. The good news is that most public health interventions are pretty cheap, and highly cost-effective...