Word: ebola
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...helped take care of the sick family. Then he died. She buried his body, but the mattress where he lay sick is still in the house. Dr. David Heyman of the World Health Organization listens to her story, and his heart sinks. He knows as much about the lethal Ebola virus as anyone alive; he was part of the team that investigated the first recorded outbreak, also in Zaire, two decades ago. Now he is leading the international brigade that has come to the city of Kikwit to battle the new emergency. "The virus is still loose...
...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...
...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