Introduction
Ebola is a virus that causes an acute, serious illness, which is often fatal if untreated. The first known human cases of Ebola occurred in 1976 during two simultaneous outbreaks in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, the virus has been infecting people from time to time, leading to outbreaks in several African countries. Scientists didn’t know the origin of the deadly virus. However, based on the nature of similar viruses, they tested 679 bats, 222 birds, and 129 small terrestrial vertebrates.
The only animals found to harbor the Ebola virus were bats, specifically, three species of fruit bat: The hammer-headed bat, Franquet’s epauletted fruit bat, and the little collared fruit bat.
The virus spreads through direct contact with blood or body fluids (urine, saliva, sweat, vomit) of a person who is sick with or has died from Ebola virus disease(EVD). Objects (such as clothes, needles, and medical equipment) contaminated with body fluids from a person who is sick with or has died from EVD. There is no evidence that Ebola can spread through sex or other contacts with vaginal fluids from a woman who has had Ebola, but semen from a man who recovered from EVD can be dangerous. The virus can remain in certain body fluids (including semen) of a patient who has recovered from EVD, even if it no longer has symptoms of severe illness. However, we don’t have any transmission evidence found through food. Also, there is no evidence that mosquitoes or other insects can transmit Ebola virus. Ebola virus can survive on dry surfaces, like doorknobs and countertops for several hours in body fluids like blood. Cleaning and disinfection should be performed using a hospital-grade disinfectant to avoid its spread.
Once we find virus evidence in individual, contact tracing becomes the priority of healthcare worker. Contacts are watched for signs of illness for 21 days from the last day they came in contact with the Ebola patient. If the contact develops a fever or other EVD symptoms, they are immediately isolated, tested, and provided care. Then the cycle of tracing starts, and everyone is checked and watched for 21 days.
The 2014–16 outbreak in West Africa was the largest Ebola outbreak since it was first discovered in 1976. The outbreak started in Guinea and then moved across land borders to Sierra Leone and Liberia. The top 10 countries affected by EVD are given below in the image.
The case was initially reported in December 2013, an 18-month-old boy from a small village in Guinea was believed to be infected by bats. The Ebola virus soon spread to Guinea’s capital city of Conakry, and the Ministry of Health in Guinea was issued an alert for an unidentified illness. Throughout the epidemic, EVD spread to seven more countries: Italy, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Later secondary infection, mainly in a healthcare setting, occurred in Italy, Mali, Nigeria, and the United States.
How did people deal with it?
The Ebola crisis of 2014 epitomized a crisis management dilemma. The global community, ill-prepared, was taken by surprise by the rapid spread of the epidemic. Local and global health governance structures appeared inadequate. Viral, health, and epidemiological factors alone do not account for this difficulty in controlling the outbreak. Some of the social conditions contributing to the size, extent, and spread of the epidemic in Guinea and surrounding countries included war, population growth, poverty, and weak health infrastructure. Indeed, Guinea’s health system’s capacity appeared to be ineffective at the time of the outbreak, with several essential functions not performing well.
There were inadequate numbers of qualified health workers, as reported by many surveys. The infrastructure, logistics, health information, surveillance, governance, and drug supply systems were weak.
The organization and management of health services were sub-optimal, and government health expenditure was low, whereas private investment was relatively high. In addition to health system weaknesses, one of the significant barriers to controlling the disease appeared to be community resistance to the Ebola response. For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported, in a 6-month retrospective analysis of the first cases of the outbreak, they were sometimes met with violence from a fearful population. The community’s fear appeared to be in response to the way intervention programs had been introduced.
However, washing hands, putting on, and removing personal protective equipment safely, and other measures helped prevent Ebola.
A coordinated communication strategy when a crisis breaks is an essential requirement of good governance. During the Ebola outbreak, governments in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone failed to communicate effectively with citizens. By the time government could do something, Ebola already had a massive spike in different countries, but most Widespread Transmission countries are shown in the pie chart below.
Over the years, a total of 28,616 cases of EVD and 11,310 deaths in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone were reported.
An additional 36 cases and 15 deaths occurred when the outbreak spread outside these three countries. There was a sudden increase in the number of cases of ebola. At that time, the recovery rate was approximately 60%. Almost every single day, there was some news of new instances, and deaths were coming.
The above graph demonstrates the number of new cases (indicated by the blue line) and the number of deaths (indicated by the orange line) on a particular day/date.
For better understanding, refer to the graph given below:
Still no vaccine, why?
Viruses are incapable of replicating on their own. What they do is inject their genome into a host cell, now to accomplish its injecting job, the virus attaches to a protein, usually called a receptor, on the surface of the host cell. To fight infections, it is crucial to identify the virus corresponding receptor, so you can prevent it from binding to host cells and thus prevent it from replicating. With Ebola, this is the missing piece of the puzzle; we do not know what the receptor is. Although several vaccines and treatments for Ebola do exist, they are stalled in various stages of testing owing to a lack of funding and international demand. Even if they did move forward, it would be years, rather than months, before the measures would reach the people in need. However, in 2005, Heinz Feldmann, a virologist, published a vaccine platform based on the vesicular stomatitis virus that has since yielded an Ebola vaccine. The vaccine to be effective in macaques was proved.
But again, money was unavailable to take the next step in testing the vaccine’s safety in healthy humans.
In my opinion, we could have fought Ebola more vigorously if the government acted more responsibly. Also, it looks like Corona is the baap(father) of Ebola, and it feels so good to see how the government is handling it so well.
What do you think? What do you feel? Tell me in the comments below.
