Ebola Strikes Again

Ebola is an infectious and generally fatal disease which is marked by fever and severe hemorrhage; it spreads through contact with infected body fluids such as blood or other secretions from an infected person (or body of ‘host’), either directly or indirectly through contaminated surfaces, needles or medical equipment. A patient is not contagious until he or she starts showing signs of the disease. For the first time, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has brought our interest in the Ebola virus to the fore. The first ever fatal figures beyond 1,000 persons in the shortest time have been recorded. Like a gale, the virus has swept through the West African states undaunted. The economical effects continue to be felt across the globe as travel bans are affected concerning the West African region. Airline revenues are bound for a down turn because of the closures of business routes that could have been lucrative. The Ebola was there before it earned itself a name. In 1972, four years before it was actually given a name, Dr. Cairns from US who was a young doctor doing missionary work in the dense equatorial jungles of Congo Kinshasa, present day Democratic Republic of Zaire (Republique du Zaire), encountered the human ravaging disease when a very sick patient came into his clinic and died before doctors could offer a diagnosis. Of course, at that particular time, this was not an extraordinary occurrence, given the complexity of exotic infectious diseases indigenous to the region.