HEALTH LIVING: LET’S TALK ABOUT IT, EBOLA

It is an contagious complex virology and genotype, (also known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever) usually fatal disease noticed by high fever, vomiting, diarrhea and severe internal bleeding, spread by contact with infected body fluids by a filovirus ( Ebola virus ), whose normal host species is unknown. Currently it’s the most deadly and brutal disease that is being experienced by mankind .

Journalists and doctors who have watched people dye of this disease describe as horrifying watching them “dissolve”

Symptoms usually become visible between two and 21 days after contact. According the WHO, treatments include dealing the patient's electrolytes and fluids, kidney function, as well as blood pressure all of which are in jeopardy as the infected bleed out of organs and even blood vessels.

Several American missionaries working to disinfect doctors and nurses operating in suits have contracted Ebola and the chief doctor fighting the outbreak in Sierra Leone, Dr. Sheik Umar Khan, recently caught the virus while treating others and died.

Ebola virus infections can be diagnosed definitively in a laboratory through several types of tests:

Samples from patients are an extreme biohazard risk; testing should be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions.

There is No licensed vaccine for EVD is available. Several vaccines are being tested, but none are available for clinical use.

Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. Patients are frequently dehydrated and require oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes or intravenous fluids.

No specific treatment is available. New drug therapies are being evaluated.

There are five known strains of Ebola, which first manifested itself in humans in the 1976 in Sudan and in a village in Zaire near the Ebola River, from which the disease draws its name. Four of the five have caused disease in humans, while the fifth, Ebola Reston, caused disease only in primates. The Reston strain is named for Reston, Virginia where the strain was discovered in a commercial monkey house in 1989. It killed hundreds of monkeys, and many more were euthanized, but never made the jump to h

The virus is not airborne, which means those in close contact can be infected and are most at risk. A person sitting next to an infected person, even if they are contagious, is not extremely likely to be infected.

Health workers and caregivers of the sick are particularly at risk for the disease because they work in close contact with infected patients during the final stages of the disease when the virus can cause internal and external bleeding.

In this outbreak alone, more than 100 health workers have been infected and at least 50 of them have died, according to the WHO.

REDUCING THE RISK OF EBOLA INFECTION IN PEOPLE

In the absence of effective treatment and a human vaccine, raising awareness of the risk factors for Ebola infection and the protective measures individuals can take is the only way to reduce human infection and death.

In Africa, during EVD outbreaks, educational public health messages for risk reduction should focus on several factors:

Reducing the risk of wildlife-to-human transmission from contact with infected fruit bats or monkeys/apes and the consumption of their raw meat. Animals should be handled with gloves and other appropriate protective clothing. Animal products (blood and meat) should be thoroughly cooked before consumption.

Reducing the risk of human-to-human transmission in the community arising from direct or close contact with infected patients, particularly with their bodily fluids. Close physical contact with Ebola patients should be avoided. Gloves and appropriate personal protective equipment should be worn when taking care of ill patients at home. Regular hand washing is required after visiting patients in hospital, as well as after taking care of patients at home.

Communities affected by Ebola should inform the population about the nature of the disease and about outbreak containment measures, including burial of the dead. People who have died from Ebola should be promptly and safely buried.

Pig farms in Africa can play a role in the amplification of infection because of the presence of fruit bats on these farms. Appropriate biosecurity measures should be in place to limit transmission. For RESTV, educational public health messages should focus on reducing the risk of pig-to-human transmission as a result of unsafe animal husbandry and slaughtering practices, and unsafe consumption of fresh blood, raw milk or animal tissue. Gloves and other appropriate protective clothing should be worn when handling sick animals or their tissues and when slaughtering animals. In regions where RESTV has been reported in pigs, all animal products (blood, meat and milk) should be thoroughly cooked before eating.

Controlling infection in health-care settings

Human-to-human transmission of the Ebola virus is primarily associated with direct or indirect contact with blood and body fluids. Transmission to health-care workers has been reported when appropriate infection control measures have not been observed.

It is not always possible to identify patients with EBV early because initial symptoms may be non-specific. For this reason, it is important that health-care workers apply standard precautions consistently with all patients – regardless of their diagnosis – in all work practices at all times. These include basic hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, the use of personal protective equipment (according to the risk of splashes or other contact with infected materials), safe injection practices and safe burial practices.

Health-care workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus should apply, in addition to standard precautions, other infection control measures to avoid any exposure to the patient’s blood and body fluids and direct unprotected contact with the possibly contaminated environment. When in close contact (within 1 metre) of patients with EBV, health-care workers should wear face protection (a face shield or a medical mask and goggles), a clean, non-sterile long-sleeved gown, and gloves (sterile gloves for some procedures).

Laboratory workers are also at risk. Samples taken from suspected human and animal Ebola cases for diagnosis should be handled by trained staff and processed in suitably equipped laboratories.