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Hundreds of people, in the small town of N’zara, Sudan, in September of 1976, were flooding into the towns sole hospital. They were complaing of the same mysterious and deadly disease. Five hundred miles away ,in Bumba, Zaïre, hundreds of people were flooding into the Yambuku Mission Hospital complaing of the same deadly disease as those in N’zara. That disease would later be know as the Ebola virus. This paper will answer three questions about this virus. First, what is Ebola? Second, what does is do to you? And lastly, where has it struck? When these questions are answered, you will be better educated about this disease.
What is Ebola? Ebola is a gram-negative filovirus. Ebola was named after a tributary of the Congo River, the Ebola River. Oh, what is a filovirus, you ask? Filoviruses are a family of viruses that resemble a tiny piece of string. Most viruses, like HIV, are ball-shaped. The closest relatives to these viruses are rabies, measles, mumps, and parainfluenza. The members of this family are the four Ebolas and Marburg. The four Ebolas are: Ebola Zaïre, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Reston, and Ebola Tai. Each of theses varies in their fatality rate and genetic makeup. Ebola is spread through direct contact with the fluids of an Ebola patient, like HIV. These fluids include saliva, blood, semen, and vaginal fluid. It can also travel through the blood of the dead. Many of the villagers who died of Ebola got it from the bodies of family and friends who had died of Ebola. Unlike HIV where it takes days to die, a patient with Ebola has a 50-90 percent depending on strain of dying in 10-14 days after initial exposure. Those that survived recovered after a week to 10 days. But, what does Ebola do to you?
Ebola is a quick acting virus and the events in this paragraph al happen with in 14 days of exposure. 2 days after you are exposed to the virus, headaches form. Over the next 2 days these headaches get worse and worse causing your temples and your eyeballs to ache. Then you become nauseated, spike a fever, and vomit. This is not vomit once or twice vomiting, this is vomit until there is nothing left to vomit then you have dry heaves. During this time you personality changes to a more passive state. Your face becomes emotionless and you become like a zombie. Bruises appear all over your body and your eyes turn red. You personality changes again and you become angrier with the people in your surroundings. While this is happening to you on the outside, blood clots are appearing everywhere on the inside. This causes dead spots to appear in many of the organs in the body. Your skin appears to have one, continuous bruise. Your skin becomes soft and pulpy. Your mouth bleeds and the surface of your tongue sloughs off. At this time you are beginning to vomit again but instead of food, you are vomiting blood and chunks of dead stomach and esophagus cells. The lining of the throat and windpipe are thrown up. Your eyes fill with blood and you weep blood. You may have a stroke from the blood clots in the brain. Your heart bleeds. The lining of the bowels opening (sounds like a bedsheet being torn in half) and blood vents out your anus. Now blood is flowing out of every opening in the body. The blood does not clot because it has lost all of its clotting factors. If you are a male, your testicles grow to the size of grapefruits. Your kidneys fail and your blood becomes toxic with urine. Your spleen grows to the size of a baseball. You have grand mal seizures. These smears blood everywhere. You become delirious from all the brain damage. You go into shock and you die. This is a very horrible way to die. This has happened to people but where?
The first outbreak of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (as the disease is known) occurred in 430 BC in Athens, Greece. This epidemic killed 500,000 people. The first modern outbreak of Ebola was in July of 1976 in the town of N’zara, Sudan. This epidemic killed 300 people and was caused by the Sudan strain. Two months later, 500 people died in Bumba, Zaïre and was caused by the Zaïre strain. If once was bad enough, think about the second time. In September of 1979, N’zara, Sudan was struck a second time by the Sudan strain and this time it killed 100 people. In November of 1989, the United States saw it first taste of Ebola. 90 monkeys died of the Reston strain of Ebola in Reston, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. A secondary outbreak occurred in the monkey house in Reston two months later. Reston is not deadly to humans. In Siena, Italy, 8 monkeys died of Ebola Reston. In April and May of 1995, 400 people died of Ebola Zaïre in Kikwit, Zaïre. In April of 1996, 38 people die of Ebola Zaïre in Gabon. Out of this outbreak, a woman dies of Ebola in Johannesburg, South Africa in May of 1996. In April of 1996, a man dies of Ebola Tai in Cotê d’Ivoire. Finally, in April of 1996, 2 monkeys died of Ebola Reston in Alice, Texas.
In this paper, you have asked some very important questions. You have learned what Ebola is and how it spreads. You have also learned the deadly symptoms of the virus. Finally, you learned where it has been. Now where will it go? There is an experimental vaccine for Ebola being created by the CDC, the military, and the Russians. You have learned that non-lethal strains of the virus have shown up in the US. Next time, we may not be so lucky.
Reston, Richard. The Hot Zone. New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1994
"The Coming Plague", Time Magazine. 22 May 1995.
The Ebola Virus. http://chrisu.virtualave.net/ebola/ebola.html (22 March 1999)
Outbreak. http://www.outbreak.org/cgi-reg/dynaserve.exe/index.html (22 March 1999)
