Anglais

INTRODUCTION

The Ebola virus causes an acute, grave and often deadly disease if it is not treated promptly.

The Ebola virus first appeared in 1976 in Nzara, Sudan and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of the Congo. As the river Ebola is situated near Yambuku, this led to the naming of the virus after the river.

Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey was diagnosed with the Ebola virus upon her return to Glasgow, after a trip to Sierra Leone with a group of healthcare workers.

We will now look at the story in more detail.

I) PRESENTATION

There have been several cases of contamination of the Ebola disease. A child who was two-years-old, died in December 2013, was considered as the starting point of the epidemic.

Ms. Cafferkey, a Scottish nurse, volunteered to help children who are suffering from the Ebola disease with the charity Save the Children.

Before boarding the plane, she did a series of tests to see if she had the Ebola disease -- each time it was negative.

Main points of the Ebola virus are: The virus is passed to humans from wild animals and can be transmitted by bodily fluids from an infected person. The average mortality rate is about 50 %. The first appearance of the Ebola virus arose in isolated villages in Central Africa, near rain forests, but the recent outbreak in western Africa affected large cities as well as rural areas. The participation of the community is essential to stop the spreading of this disease. In order to do so, there are necessary steps to be taken including: surveillance and research of how the infected individuals transmitted the disease, quality controls in the laboratory, safe exhuming of bodies for additional research and social mobilization. The early methods of treatment centred on the rehydration and addressing the symptoms so that survival rates could be improved. There is no current approved method of treatment that prevents the virus from spreading, but several treatments are being studied. At present, there is no licensed vaccine against the Ebola virus.

The duration of incubation varies from 2 to 21 days.

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