West Nile Virus Essay

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Mosquitoes, fever and even death may be some of the things that come to mind when we're asked to think about West Nile Virus. Many of us would consider mosquitoes a small trade-off for what the summertime provides, but what if there were more at risk than a bump above your skin and an itch? In a not so distant past West Nile Virus ascended into news broadcasts all throughout the country and alarming it's residents. Today however, that all seems to be an afterthought. The intentions today are to cover the first found cases of West Nile Virus, the symptoms of West Nile Virus, and finally West Nile Virus' impact on the United States. Through the research here, the hope is that we can all have a better understanding of how West Nile Virus works. West Nile Virus gets its name from its birthplace in the West Nile District. According to (Gubler, Duane, Marfin, Anthony & Petersen, Lyle, 2003) it was in 1937 that Uganda had its first isolated case of West Nile Virus (para. 4). This first case was found in the blood of a woman determined to be febrile. According to (James Sejvar 2003): The patient presented in the setting of a large epidemiologic study of yellow fever virus; however, inoculations of mice with the patient's serum resulted in the isolation of a virus with physical and pathologic properties similar to those of two flaviviruses, St. Louis encephalitis virus and Japanese B encephalitis virus, and sharing immunological relationships with these viruses. (para. 3) West Nile Virus has been determined to be a flavivirus. Flavivirus has been defined as, "a type of arbovirus that causes a wide range of diseases in humans,including yellow fever, dengue, and West Nile fever. It is spread by ticks or mosquitoes". (flavi... ... middle of paper ... ...ounters with West Nile were accounted. Between the travels of Uganda where we were first introduced to West Nile, to the outbreaks in Israel, and eventually on our own shore in New York. We covered the symptoms of West Nile and explained how scary the thought that anywhere from 70%-80% of infected do not show any symptoms. Through that research we discussed how many different types of West Nile we could contract and how each played vastly different roles to the illness. Finally, we approached what the response and impact was for the United States. We covered the outbreaks of 2002 and 2012, we dealt with high concentrated areas(i.e. Texas, Louisiana, Illinois), along with preventive measures put in place for research and funding. Please remember that we still need increased funding and awareness to the public to help further the cause against West Nile Virus.

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