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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Locke, Susannah. "How Do Ebola Outbreaks Happen?" Vox. Marty Moe, 9 Sept. 2014. Web. 17 Sept. 2014.
Long, Nick. "Suspected Ebola Fever Surfaces in DRC." VOA. N.p., 30 May 2013. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
Sifferlin, Alexandra. "How Ebola Spread in the Democratic Republic of Congo." Time. Time, 27 Aug. 2014. Web. 18 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 general geographic region that has been most affected by the different strains of the Ebola virus is Central Africa, namely the cities of Zaire, Sudan, and Gabon. The first known occurrence of Ebola was found in a man by the name of Charles Monet, who had currently taken a trip...
...d the disease from an infected chimpanzee in the forest. She was sent to a Swiss hospital where she recovered. An autopsy of the Chimpanzee showed effects similar to the Ebola virus.
Ebola is a virus and part of the negative-stranded RNA family known as filovirus. It was discovered in 1976 in Africa and was named after a river in Zaire. When the virus is looked at under an electron microscope the filoviridae appear as being long, thin and occasionally they have 'branches' sprouting from one place or another. Ebola can also take the form of a 'U' or a 'b'. There are four known strains of the virus; they are Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Reston and Ebola Tai. Ebola Reston only causes disease in monkeys but as the rest of them take approximately 8 hours to duplicate itself.
The Ebola virus and Marburg virus are the two known members of the Filovirus family. Marburg is a relative of the Ebola virus. The four strains of Ebola are Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Reston, and Ebola Tai. Each one is named after the location where it was discovered. These filoviruses cause hemorrhagic fever, which is actually what kills victims of the Ebola virus. Hemorrhagic fever is defined as a group of viral aerosol infections, characterized by fever, chills, headache, fatigue, and respiratory symptoms. This is followed by capillary hemorrhages, and, in severe infection, kidney failure, hypotension, and, possibly, death. The incubation period for Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever ranges from 2-21 days. The blood fails to clot and patients may bleed from injection sites and into the gastrointestinal tract, skin and internal organs. Massive destruction of the liver is one distinct symptom of Ebola. This virus does in ten days what it takes AIDS ten years to do. It also requires bio-safety level four containment, the highest and most dangerous level. HIV the virus that causes AIDS requires only a bio-safety level of two. In reported outbreaks, 50%-90% of cases have been fatal.
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.
U.S. National Library of Medicine, 26 Sept. 2011. Web. The Web. The Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
... Medicine. 3rd ed. Vol.3. Detroit: Gale, 2006.2139-2141. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
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.
...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.