Word: lassa
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Even so, the accident has raised questions about whether such dangerous disease agents are being handled carefully enough. Sabia and several related viruses -- Junin, Machupo and Guanarito in South America and Lassa in Africa, all members of the arenavirus family -- are particularly frightening because they can kill in such a grisly way. Characteristic symptoms are high fever, uncontrolled bleeding in virtually every organ and finally shock. The liver turns yellow and decomposes. Blood can leak from literally every bodily orifice, including the eyes and the pores of the skin...
...through a chemical-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...
Other CDC experts work with Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to prevent exotic diseases from entering the country. Laboratory Director Joseph McCormick, who studied Lassa fever in Sierra Leone, sped to the Atlanta airport in a four-wheel-drive vehicle during a snowstorm last January to pick up a mysteriously ailing passenger from Nigeria. The man was placed in an isolation room until it was certain he was not suffering from one of the deadly viruses...
...then hemorrhage from the nose, mouth and intestine. Depending on the particular type of hemorrhagic fever, up to 90% of victims die. Last year such fevers claimed more than a thousand lives. The viruses live in 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...
...Like Lassa fever, Marburg virus disease is highly infectious. Though scientists still do not know the exact mechanism, the disease can be transmitted by contact with infected blood, tissue and even semen; it may also be spread by particles in the air. No cure has yet been found, although doctors are hoping a serum can be made from blood of surviving victims who have antibodies against the virus...