Jenna Lisa Bednarz
Comm 203.513
Dr. Jones Barbour
September 18, 2014
Introduction:
Attention: Imagine yourself waking up one morning thinking you have the flu. You have fever, a headache, your body aches, and you are sick to your stomach. You make yourself get the courage to roll out of bed and drive yourself to the doctor to find out that your problems go far beyond how you feel at the moment. Not only are you feeling terrible, you are also bleeding internally and therefore on a dead end street for death.
Thesis: Ebola is virus that has a higher death rate than survival rate which is has many reports of cases in West Africa, but if we aren’t careful, could make its way to the U.S.
Preview: Today I want to
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Next, I am going to explain Ebola from the point of contraction, the actual virus, and then on to how people can protect themselves from Ebola.
A. Taking a step backwards, scientists have been trying to pin point the actual cause of the Ebola virus and where it exactly started from and it’s transmission.
i. According to Susannah Locke, science journalist, Ebola comes and goes over time, but the main transmission starts with an infected animal (bat, apes, and monkeys) and then a human handles this meat, comes in contact with the meat, then contracting Ebola. (How Do Ebola Outbreaks Happen) ii. Ebola is not transmitted by air, a person has to come in contact with it by means of bodily fluid (sweat or feces) in a living person or dead person and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has even reported that Ebola stays in a man’s semen for up to 3 months after contraction. (Ebola (Ebola Virus Disease)-Transmission) iii. The recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has reported 62 cases and 35 deaths as of September 9, 2014 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the reason for this large number is human to human contact. (Ebola (Ebola Virus
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"The Ebola Virus Matrix Protein Penetrates into the Plasma Membrane." The Ebola Virus Matrix Protein Penetrates into the Plasma Membrane. JBC- The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 22 Feb. 2013. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.
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The novel, “The Hot Zone”, by Richard Preston, is an extraordinary tale about a virus called the Ebola virus. The author interviews a number of different people that all had encounters with the virus and records their stories. He is very interested by what they tell him and throughout the novel he is always seeking to find more information about it. There were many different encounters in this book but in my summary I am going to explain the ones that interested me the most.
ED. Mayo Clinic Staff -. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 05 Jan 2012. Web. The Web.
Three years later, The United States Army Medical Research Institute is conducting research on monkeys injected with the Mayinga strain of Ebola Zaire virus in effort to develop a vaccine. Ebola, which is believed to be transmitted through blood and body fluids, somehow infects control monkeys across a room.
Schulman, Joshua M., and David E. Fisher. "Abstract." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 28 Aug. 0005. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
The Ebola virus can be passed from one person into another by bodily contact. Airborne transmission of Ebola has not yet been confirmed, as there is no substantial evidence of this occurring. Researchers are still to this day observing the ways of transmission of this virus from one person to the next. In previous outbreaks, this infection has often occurred among hospital care workers or family members who were caring for an ill or dead person infected with the virus. Blood and body fluids contain large amounts of virus, thus transmission of the virus has also occurred as a result of hypodermic needles being reused in the treatment of patients. Under-financed health care facilities in countries such as Zaire, Gabon, and Sudan find reusing needles a common practice. This contributes the vast amount of fatalities of this virus in these cities.
Bodily fluids such as blood, vomit, secretions, or semen also transmit Ebola. People who clean this up ma...
Ebola can be spread in a number of ways. Ebola reproduction in infected cells takes about eight hours. Hundreds to thousands of new virus cells are then released during periods of a few hours to a few days. In most outbreaks, transmission from patient to patient within hospitals has been associated within the reuse of needles and syringes. High rates of transmission in outbreaks have occurred from patients to family members who provide nursing care without barriers to prevent exposure to blood, other body fluids such as, vomit, urine and feces. Risk for transmitting the infection appears to be highest during the later stages of illness. Those symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea, shock, and frequently hemorrhaging. Even a person who has recovered from the symptoms of the illness may have the virus present in the genital secretions for a short time after. This makes it possible for the virus to be spread by sexual activity. Complete recovery is reached only when none virus’s cells are left in any body fluids. This is quite rare.
The Ebola-Zaire branch was the first to be recognized and has the highest death rate of 89 percent. The Ebola-Sudan subtype has a death rate of 53 percent, and the Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever virus as a whole having a 68 percent death rate. Since the Ebola virus has not been recognized for a long time, it cannot be said for sure how it is transmitted though it is believed to be zoonotic, meaning that it is transmitted by animals and from contact with the virus, making it spread quickly through family and friends. It also transmits itself nosocomially, where it can transmit quickly through a health care environment, like a hospital. This is especially dangerous in places like Africa,...
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In 1976 the first two Ebola outbreaks were recorded. In Zaire and western Sudan five hundred and fifty people reported the horrible disease. Of the five hundred and fifty reported three hundred and forty innocent people died. Again in 1995 Ebola reportedly broke out in Zaire, this time infecting over two hundred and killing one hundred and sixty. (Bib4, Musilam, 1)
According to the World Health Organization (2014) “Ebola first took place in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks, one in Nzara, Sudan.., in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. [and the] latter occurred in a village near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name”. The disease has also started spreading through countries such as Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (which are West African countries). The United States of America had their first case of Ebola on September 30, 2014, when a man traveling back from Liberia was diagnosed with the disease in Dallas, Texas (CDC 2014). The man did not show symptoms until he reached the United States.
The Ebola virus can easily be transmitted through direct contact of blood, organs, secretions of any kind and semen from any person infected. Another method is that of used needles that have been infected. With all countries considered, the 3rd world and the reuse of needles are a common practice, due to lack of funds and supplies. Though recovered patients pose no serious threat, the virus is present up to 7 weeks after being treated. Vomit and diarrhea contain the infected blood and mucus so any contact with this, e.g. in poor drinking water can cause contraction of the virus. Luckily enough Ebola is not airborne and in some cases due to its self-limiting nature, it has been known to die out within a person before killing the host. In one case when a Swiss researcher found the Ebola Tai virus, she contracted it from a chimpanzee. This was during an investigation into the spur of deaths among them at the time. To this day, there is still no evidence as to what host carried the virus before humans and no location of the virus is known.
...ional Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 24 Jan. 2014. Web. 24 Apr. 2014.
Ed. David Zieve. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 26 Feb. 2014. Web. The Web.