Word: ebola
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...shower chamber, they must provide another personal number to gain access to the pressurized inner sanctum. There the scientists wear seamless blue space suits, equipped with their own air filtration systems, to work with some of the world's most lethal microbes, including those that cause Lassa fever and Ebola virus, two maladies that produce severe internal bleeding and are native to Africa. There have been no fatalities in the lab. When a worker is exposed to a disease, he is flown to the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Frederick...
Nevertheless, optimism is tempered by knowledge that the struggle against disease never ends. Of the deadly African Ebola virus, Foege says: "What keeps it from spreading here? I don't know." Thus research work on Ebola at Atlanta's Maximum Containment Lab goes on. Another potential threat is a subviral particle that combines with the hepatitis-B virus to cause more severe infections and liver cancer. Discovered in 1977, this so-called Delta agent is starting to show up in high-risk groups, including some of the same ones who develop AIDS. Even the victory over smallpox permits no complacency...
...animals apparently without causing any symptoms, then are passed to human beings. In Lassa fever, the organism lives in a particular type of rat that infests rural dwellings in West Africa. It spreads to villagers through water or food contaminated by the rodents' urine. In Marburg and Ebola fever, the animal host is still unknown. What makes these diseases particularly grim is that they can be spread person to person, often to nurses and doctors, through infected blood...
Long before Ebola was due, Vullier kept all visitors away from the quarters of mother Irumu and father Dolo. He fed them both a special vitamin-rich diet of oat porridge with milk and salt, raw onions, carrots and watercress. Every morning a zoo attendant went to the Bois de Vincennes to pick fresh acacia leaves for the expectant okapis. Twice every day a keeper massaged Irumu's teats so that she would not fly into a rage when her infant first tried to suckle...
After the birth of 50-lb. Ebola, father Dolo was removed as an unnecessary hazard, and the news of the birth was kept from the public to avoid a rush of photographers. Now the worst is over. Mother Irumu suckles her baby three times a day with undeviated maternalism, but refuses if humans are near. Ebola has grown like a weed, more than doubling her weight in three weeks. Assistant Director Vullier, watching fondly, says: "We think we have saved little Ebola, but of course with animals one never knows...