Ebola: The facts, the fiction

The first simultaneous outbreaks in 1976 were in Sudan and DRC, the latter in Yambuku village near Ebola River, from where the disease takes it names.Now it is back, and it is being treated like a criminal. West African health authorities called it “serious and contagious” and added it was “aware and monitoring” the outbreak.Doctors […]

The first simultaneous outbreaks in 1976 were in Sudan and DRC, the latter in Yambuku village near Ebola River, from where the disease takes it names.
Now it is back, and it is being treated like a criminal. West African health authorities called it “serious and contagious” and added it was “aware and monitoring” the outbreak.
Doctors Without Borders described the outbreak, which has killed 95 in Guinea alone by Wednesday, as “unprecedented.”
Unprecedented, because no EVD outbreak is recorded in West Africa. Since 1976, outbreaks have been in Sudan, Congo, Uganda, mostly in Central Africa. This time, mostly West African countries are under viral attack—Guinea, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia.
Could Nigeria join the pile? Yes, and no, depending on how things take shape. For now, Nigeria has no case of Ebola, and the rumoured case—which federal health ministry, with mandate to announce outbreaks, insists it did not announce—is Dengue fever, not Ebola.
If that’s fiction, here’s a fact: Nigeria has “cause for anxiety for many reasons,” said health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu.
Ebola virus typically lives in bats in tropical rainforests of Central Africa, but can be passed on to other animals—say a chimpanzee shares fruit with a bat, or a human eats the bat or chimp.
Ebola is a zoonose—meaning it transfers from animals to humans. Except that it kills organisms not its natural host—in this case, chimps and humans. Humans get the virus from eating or handling animals and pass it to other humans by contact.
Fact: Viruses don’t travel, except in other living creatures. Therefore it is puzzling how this virus hitched a ride from Central Africa—crossing Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Ivory Coast—to Guinea. Someone or something must have taken it that far.
The forth-and-back of international travel means viruses don’t respect borders, and there lies three-pronged worry.
“Firstly, Nigeria is contiguous with other countries contiguous to the states already named. Secondly, Nigerians travel a lot, and third is that it is so easy to monitor what happens through ports but it is a challenge when it comes to our land borders,” said Chukwu.
In parts of Nigeria, wild game chopped up as “bushmeat” is considered a delicacy. Forget the notion that dosing your bushmeat with pepper is a way to stay safe.
“Enhancing our surveillance in areas of high probability like forest areas, where they eat bushmeat, areas where you have lots of bats and other tiny [wild game]”, is the official line, said Dr Abdulsalami Nasidi, head of Nigerian Centre for Disease Control.
“Secondly, in this area and in this moment, if we see anybody at all whether its malaria or not malaria, if you have fever, don’t treat at home to make sure that you don’t have any of the Ebola that we can pick early and manage.”
The Centre has instituted border checks for symptoms, which typically show up between two and 21 days, starting with sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat.
Next comes vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding, hence EVD’s classification as a haemorrhagic fever—a group which consists Marburg, Lassa and even Dengue fevers.
Fact: So long as blood and body fluids contain the virus, a person is infectious, which is why healthworkers initially caring for parents are usually the first line of workers to contract the infection. Next are relatives caring for an infected loved one. Whole families have been wiped out in previous outbreaks.
EVD has neither vaccine nor treatment. The most treatment is supportive, involving oral rehydration salts to replace body fluids rapidly lost as the disease progresses. In at least 90% of cases, this treatment might not work and the patient dies. In fact, EVD kills nine of out every 10 it infects. That’s what the World Health Organisation means by EVD having a fatality rate of 90%. Case in point, since 1976, 29 outbreaks of EVD killed 1590 people but the six deadliest outbreaks alone killed 1220.
Fact: Outbreaks of EVD are managed by severe isolation and “barrier nursing”, along with careful handling of patients and corpses, once enough rubber gloves, gowns, goggles, boots, body bags and knowledge arrive the scene.