Word: ebola
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...doing everything possible to stop the spread," says Dr. Sam Zaramba, Uganda's top health official. For weeks, Uganda's health ministry released statements about a "mysterious" virus plaguing Bundibugyo, a western region on the border with the Congo. Uganda experienced an outbreak of the Marburg virus - a rare Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever - this summer, raising speculation that the disease had returned. Ebola was last in Uganda in 2000, when 425 people were infected, and over half, including a doctor, died...
...When the Ebola virus resurfaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year, health officials hoped to contain the outbreak to the east of the central African country, keeping it to a densely forested area accessible only through dirt roads and tiny villages. That epidemic, which was at its height earlier in the fall, saw 187 people killed and 267 more infected. But the extremely contagious disease, which has a 90% death rate, has now spread to neighboring Uganda, where a new strain of the virus has already killed 19 since September. Now, as the Ebola strain continues...
...only last week that health authorities identified the disease as the Ebola virus after a three-month delay. The lack of rural labs to test phantom viruses resulted in the staggering delay in diagnosis. Ebola symptoms are also vague, and health officials did not suspect the virus was present until it hit its epidemic stride. Meanwhile, local populations have been burying deceased but infected relatives without protection. Usually, infected corpses are covered in plastic before they are buried...
...make matters worse, medical staff members fled treatment centers last week after six health workers were infected with the virus. Ebola is contracted through body fluids, particularly blood, putting at risk health workers who are working in centers without protective gear and proper sanitation. Zaramba says, however, that the workers were likely exposed in the time gap before the virus was correctly classified...
...Health and Human Services report the same year found more than 600. The GAO's Rhodes told Congress, however, the number is "surely in the thousands." Level 4 labs, which handle the most dangerous pathogens - those for which there are no known therapeutics or vaccines, such as smallpox, Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers - are fewer in number, partly because they're very expensive. Before 2001 the U.S. had five Level 4 labs; now there are 15 in operation or coming on line soon, including the planned $470 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), which will cover as much...