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Recommended: Epidemiology essay on outbreak of ebola
The Ebola outbreak started to make families abandon their love ones. Dealing with the disease that causing many to die in West Africa, people who interact with this dangerous and epidemic virus are treated like outsiders. After Mr. Kamara , a villager, started working for the Ebola task force, his family said, “ he was no longer welcome in his village”(Nossiter and Solomon). The quotation could illustrate to the audience that people in West Africa would deny their loved ones who joined fight against of Ebola. Families broken up by the virus of Ebola. The illness was easy to contract by just physical contact. Helene Cooper asserts,”Ebola is spread through bodily fluids: vomit, blood, feces, tears , saliva, and sweat”. The illness illustrates
Ebola from everyone’s point of view is seen as inferno. Dr. Steven Hatch’s memorable journey began with him volunteering to leave for Liberia in 2013 to work at a hospital in Monrovia to fight Ebola in one of its most affected areas. There were only a few patients with Ebola when he arrived. The number of patients rapidly increased over his time in Liberia. After six months Ebola was declared a world health emergency and not only were ordinary people outside of the hospital getting the virus but the medical personnel that were tending to the patients had caught it and some of them had even died.
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.
For those infected, skin glistens with sweat, hair hangs from the weight of dampness, and faces flush with fever. He shows the dead with a pale green cast, staring straight ahead with vomit drying to their faces. To illustrate the virus’ spread, he frames scenes at hand-level showing fingers pushing elevator buttons, gripping poles on public transportation, passing water glasses, and signing paperwork. This element of cinematography highlights society’s vulnerability to the invisibility of the virus due to its rapid spread via common
This case is very recent and relevant to the Ebola epidemic effecting the world today. The facts of this case are:
Quammen takes a more clinical and realistic tone in regard to the Ebola crisis of 2014. By speaking in a more clinical tone he his is increasing his credibility to the audience. Quammen takes time to point out the overall dramatic moments in Preston’s novel. In comparison to Preston, Quammen takes time in the interview to promote his own novel Ebola: The Natural and human history of a deadly virus to the audience. He points this out with the intent to correct the panic and fear that Preston created. He mainly addresses the skeptics of The Hot Zone along with terrified population. Quammen states, and believes, that Ebola is the “dress rehearsal” of dieses yet to come. He doesn’t romanticize the Ebola viruses, he simple states that it needs to be “controlled and stopped”, he does not create Ebola into a disease that needs to be feared. He believes that through Preston’s novel Ebola is miscocepted and interrupted. He is attempting to change the fear into
Unlike those mentioned in The Hot Zone, I, as an average American citizen, can never relate to the experiences of having Marburg or Ebola. However, I can now visualize these experiences and understand the grave circumstances Americans went under and what the Central Africans had to endure. The Hot Zone depicts the onset of symptoms from Marburg and Ebola and the ease it can travel from one victim to the next. In the situation of Marburg, Charles Monet is infected and sitting on a twenty four hour flight while showing symptoms.(17,18 Preston) This is extremely eerie as monkeys had been infected with Ebola and Marburg just by breathing it.(224 Preston) This revealed to me that no one is exempt from stopping or catching a virus like Ebola.(226 Preston) I live in a society where we don’t have a virus affecting us like there is in Central Africa. This makes me more cautious of the things I would come into contact with such as sick people. It’s not as if that I would disown them if they were sick but I would take more measures to ensure that I wouldn’t catch their cold. Along with this I’ve been looking at the measures I take to ensure no one else would catch my cold or virus and that I can recover from it. Overall the book has widen my perception of viruses and infectious diseases. I don’t take the topic of Ebola or Marburg lightly
The Hot Zone is a true story about how the knowledge of the Ebola virus was first developed and the background behind it. The Ebola virus kills nine out of ten of its victims and it kills quickly and painfully. It is extremely contagious and the blood and vomit the victim lets out can spread the virus quickly. The Hot Zone goes into detail of the experience of getting to the bottom of the Ebola Virus.
The book then begins to tell about the “Reston facility.” In the building, hundreds of monkeys are infected with a new form of the Ebola virus discovered by veterinarian Nancy Jaax. With a new viral threat the US government moves to euthanize the monkeys and collect blood samples for testing. After several mishaps, all of the monkeys are successfully killed and everyone avoids infection; however, the situation builds a sense of urgency in the book and reader to understand the nature of the violent power of nature. The book ends in Kenya with the author visiting the spot where the first two Marburg victims contracted the virus. Throughout the novel it becomes evident that no matter how well-studied we think we are on a certain virus, there will always be an adaptation or a new virus that puzzles even the most intelligent scientists. It speaks to how limited we are in understanding the true power of nature. The book also shows how driven we are by fear. The constant threat of exposure and infection drives researchers to understand and combat
Ebola. The name rings with the fear of a horrible death. The interesting thing is, it's not as bad a what you probably conjured up in your mind when you read "Ebola". The Western news media has significantly hyped up the dangers of the virus. In the US, Ebola is virtually synonymous with death! During the current unprecedented worldwide outbreak there have been about 5,000 deaths due to Ebola. Compare this with Influenza, which causes nearly 20,000 deaths every year!
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.
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 Haemorrahagic Fever, or Ebola for short, was first recognized as a virus in 1967. The first breakout that caused the Ebola virus to be recognized was in Zaire with 318 people infected and 280 killed. There are five subtypes of the Ebola virus, but only four of them affect humans. There are the Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Ivory Coast and the Ebola-Bundibugyo. The fifth one, the Ebola-Reston, only affects nonhuman primates. The Ebola-Zaire was recognized on August 26, 1976 with a 44 year old schoolteacher as the first reported case. The Ebola-Sudan virus was also recognized in 1976 and was thought to be that same as Ebola-Zaire and it is thought to have broken out in a cotton factory in the Sudan. The Ebola-Ivory Coast was first discovered in 1994 in chimpanzees in the Tia Forest in Africa. On November 24, 2007, the Ebola-Bundibugyo branch was discovered with an approximate total of 116 people infected in the first outbreak and 39 deaths. The Ebola-Reston is the only one of the five subtypes to not affect humans, only nonhuman primates. It first broke out in Reston, Virginia in 1989 among crab eating macaques.
Throughout the film, the director's emphasized is in the development and transmitting of the disease more than the characters who contracted the disease. In addition, the film promotes the effects of the disease not only on the physical aspect of the people but also on their emotional aspect of their lives. For example, when the people are in line for a vaccine to possibly prevent the disease, one can see the fear and anger brought on when the vaccines ran out. Furthermore, the rations for food and water brought about more emotions, fear, and the fight for survival. The concept of kill or be killed apparently at this time. The people would fight, push, and or kill to save themselves or their loved ones from this
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)
One of the current major concerns in the world is the outbreak of Ebola. Ebola is a infectious disease that comes from the Ebola virus and it can cause death if the patient is left untreated. The disease can be managed with treatment of the patient, however. Ebola is a disease that is a major concern in the Subsaharan African Realm, and in the North American Realm,but it is beginning to be dealt with sufficiently in the Northern American Realm.