By now you might have already heard of 2014 Ebola virus outburst and recent 2019 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which was declared as a public health emergency of international concern. So far, more than 1,600 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the latest outbreak, which began in August last year.
#Ebola outbreak in #DRC declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern – press release ?https://t.co/wiaOsDeOO7 pic.twitter.com/ElR91WS98z
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) July 17, 2019
Situation till 2014
Till before the outburst, serious Ebola cases have only shown up in Central and West Africa. But now it had jumped from Africa’s jungles to urban centers. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the world’s deadliest to date and WHO has now declared an international health emergency in response.
So it is our responsibility now to know about the symptoms and prevention of this Virus before it get entered into your city. Lets go deeper….
Image source: Inquire.net
What is Ebola Virus?
The Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a severe condition caused by a virus from the Filoviridae family. Known to be a condition that is transmitted from animals to humans, this virus spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or animal. It is a rare and deadly virus that causes bleeding inside and outside the body. As the virus spreads through the body, it damages the immune system and organs. Ultimately, it causes levels of blood-clotting cells to drop. This leads to severe, uncontrollable bleeding.
How is it transmitted? What are its causes?
Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. In Africa, infection has been documented through the handling of infected chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.
Ebola then spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids.
In humans the disease can be transmitted by the following methods:
- Coming into contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of an infected person.
- Healthcare workers may contract the disease through transmission as well through contact with infected bodily fluids.
- Handling the meat from infected animals.
- Contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person who has passed away.
Signs and symptoms of Ebola virus disease (EVD)
Early on, Ebola can feel like the flu or other illnesses. Symptoms show up 2 to 21 days after infection and usually include:
- High fever
- Headache
- Joint and muscle aches
- Sore throat
- Weakness
- Stomach pain
- Lack of appetite
Once the condition has progressed a person may notice symptoms like:
- Bleeding from the mouth, ears, nose and ears.
- Increased sensitivity to pain on the skin,
- Genital swelling
- Conjunctivitis
- Rashes all over the body,
- And reddening of the roof of the mouth.
A person infected with Ebola cannot spread the disease until they develop symptoms.
Diagnosis
Other diseases that should be ruled out before a diagnosis of EVD can be made include: malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, cholera, leptospirosis, plague, rickettsiosis, relapsing fever, meningitis, hepatitis and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.
Ebola virus infections can be diagnosed definitively in a laboratory through several types of tests:
- antibody-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)
- antigen detection tests
- serum neutralization test
- reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay
- electron microscopy
- virus isolation by cell culture.
Samples from patients are an extreme biohazard risk; testing should be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions.
Vaccine and treatment
No licensed vaccine for EVD is available. Several vaccines are being tested, but none are available for clinical use till 2014
Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. Patients are frequently dehydrated and require oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes or intravenous fluids.
An experimental Ebola vaccine proved highly protective against EVD in a major trial in Guinea in 2015. The vaccine, called rVSV-ZEBOV, was studied in a trial involving 11 841 people. Among the 5837 people who received the vaccine, no Ebola cases were recorded 10 days or more after vaccination. In comparison, there were 23 cases 10 days or more after vaccination among those who did not receive the vaccine.
The rVSV-ZEBOV vaccine is being used in the ongoing 2018-2019 Ebola outbreak in DRC.
Initial data indicates that the vaccine is highly effective.
Source: https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/ebola-virus-disease
The International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Ebola in Democratic Republic of the Congo provided the following public health advice:
For affected countries:
• Continue to strengthen community awareness, engagement, and participation,
including at points of entry, with at-risk populations, in particular to identify and address
cultural norms and beliefs that serve as barriers to their full participation in the
response.
• Continue cross-border screening and screening at main internal roads to ensure that no
contacts are missed and enhance the quality of screening through improved sharing of
information with surveillance teams.
• Continue to work and enhance coordination with the UN and partners to reduce
security threats, mitigate security risks, and create an enabling environment for public
health operations as an essential platform for accelerating disease-control efforts.
• Strengthen surveillance with a view towards reducing the proportion of community
deaths and the time between detection and isolation, and implementing real-time
genetic sequencing to better understand the dynamics of disease transmission.
• Optimal vaccine strategies that have maximum impact on curtailing the outbreak, as
recommended by WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), should be
implemented rapidly.
• Strengthen measures to prevent nosocomial infections, including systematic mapping pf
health facilities, targeting of IPC interventions and sustain support to those facilities
through monitoring and sustained supervision.
For neighboring countries:
• At-risk countries should work urgently with partners to improve their preparedness for
detecting and managing imported cases, including the mapping of health facilities and
active surveillance with zero reporting.
• Countries should continue to map population movements and sociological patterns that
can predict risk of disease spread.
• Risk communications and community engagement, especially at points of entry, should
be increased.
• At-risk countries should put in place approvals for investigational medicines and
vaccines as an immediate priority for preparedness
For all States:
• No country should close its borders or place any restrictions on travel and trade. Such
measures are usually implemented out of fear and have no basis in science. They push
the movement of people and goods to informal border crossings that are not
monitored, thus increasing the chances of the spread of disease. Most critically, these
restrictions can also compromise local economies and negatively affect response
operations from a security and logistics perspective.
• National authorities should work with airlines and other transport and tourism
industries to ensure that they do not exceed WHO’s advice on international traffic.
• The Committee does not consider entry screening at airports or other ports of entry
outside the region to be necessary.
Source – https://www.who.int/ihr/procedures/statement-emergency-committee-ebola-drc-july-2019.pdf
We request all of you to be careful and spread this info to your beloved ones!
WorthvieW
