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African Ebola outbreak shows no sign of slowing
- ChuckMcM 13y agoSo what killed (or squelched) previous outbreaks?
- mayneack 13y agoThey were rural and burned themselves out once people stopped visiting the hospitals where they were transmitted through shared needles. This is a great book that covers many early outbreaks: http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases/dp/0140250913/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases/dp...
- edj 13y agoHere's a Medicines Sans Frontieres Ebola expert answering that very question[1]: In recent years, MSF has been involved in battling every Ebola epidemic. Once the first case is confirmed by a blood test, every person who cares for an infected patient must wear a hazmat suit, gloves, a mask and protective goggles and exercise extreme caution when administering treatment. Decontamination chambers are generally installed between the isolated patients and the external environment. To confine the epidemic, it is critical to trace the entire transmission chain. All individuals who have had contact with patients who may be contaminated are monitored and isolated at the first sign of infection. The affected communities must also be informed about the illness and the precautions to be taken to limit risks of contamination. Basic hygiene – such as washing one’s hands – can significantly reduce the risk of transmission. 1: http://www.msf.org/article/guinea-%E2%80%9Cthere-no-treatment-and-no-vaccine-ebola-priority-isolate-suspected-cases%E2%80%9D http://www.msf.org/article/guinea-%E2%80%9Cthere-no-treatmen...
- Xylakant 13y agoAs deadly as Ebola is for the individual patient, it's somewhat easily containable compared to other infections: It spreads via blood or other body fluids, it's not airborne or transmitted via touch. From what I've read somewhat prolonged exposure is required - so pretty basic hospital equipment is sufficient as long as you can keep the patients isolated. Previous outbreaks were contained by isolating the patients and giving them the best care possible until either all perished or overcame the disease. It's a gruesome sickness but it doesn't have the potential to hop like SARS etc. do.
- joe_the_user 13y agoI would guess then that an outbreak of this sort is a testament to extremely squalid living conditions in the areas affected.
- batmansbelt 13y agoI read once that there is a ritual of bathing the dead that causes the spread of diseases like this in certain cultures.
- mayneack 13y agoDescriptions from early outbreaks included rituals of evacuating all undigested food as part of the burial process.
- laichzeit0 13y agoSounds interesting, where did you read this?
- mayneack 13y agohttp://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases/dp/0140250913/ http://www.amazon.com/The-Coming-Plague-Emerging-Diseases/dp...
- ds9 13y agoPart of the problem may be certain animal contacts, such as eating "bush meat" (mentioned in the article, also discussed in the Laurie Garrett book). Maybe a campaign against those practices could be worthwhile
- grecy 13y ago> Maybe a campaign against those practices could be worthwhile It's very difficult to convince people to not eat food when the alternative is starving.
- k_kelly 13y agoEbola is actually too aggressive. It tends to kill and incapacitate people so quickly that they don't have time to spread it to others.
- stonewhite 13y agoSo it should devolve its lethal symptoms until it spreads to Greenland and Madagascar.
- nnq 13y agolet me guess, you got this from playing Plague Inc. (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.plagueinc https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miniclip.p...) on your phone, right? ...the game is so unrealistic that it almost annoyed me to the point of motivating me to write a competing more realistic game ...but then I realized that "more realistic" would be too detrimental to the gameplay for it to be enjoyable :)
- marvin 13y agoPeople keep repeating this, but it isn't true. Ebola has an incubation period which can be longer than two weeks, and the disease can be transmitted during the incubation period. This is more than enough time to transmit the disease to more than one other person in a dense population. The biggest reason we haven't seen larger-scale outbreaks of EVD/EHF is that previous outbreaks have been in geographically remote areas, and that doctors are stomping on it with full force whenever an outbreak occurs. The outbreak going on right now disproves the theory that Ebola just burns itself out quickly.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Fomite 13y agoIndeed. "Stochastic extinction and skilled epidemiologists and clinicians" are vastly more likely explanations than "It's just so good at killing people". That explanation just has way better press.
- rasz_pl 13y agoThey waited until infected died.
- Fomite 13y agoDiseases, even diseases with pretty absurd transmission potential, can die out in small populations due to random chance. For the most part, previous outbreaks have been in the bush - it's entirely possible the answer is "Because we were lucky"
- unspecified 13y agoAbout two weeks ago, NPR mentioned two things that make this outbreak more worrying: 1. Cases in 2 countries with suspected cases in 2 more [1] 2. Cases in a capital city of 2M+ people http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/08/300509073/the-ebola-outbreak-three-weeks-in-dire-but-not-hopeless http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/04/08/300509073/the-ebo... [1] thanks nbouscal
- nbouscal 13y agoOne thing that is important to know is that there actually are not any confirmed cases in Sierra Leone [1] or Mali. There were many suspected cases in both countries, but all of them have tested false so far. So for now, at least, it is only active in Guinea and Liberia. [1]: One clarification is that two people from Sierra Leone died from EVD while they were in Guinea, and their bodies were repatriated to Sierra Leone and buried there. Sierra Leone has since banned repatriation of bodies to mitigate the risk of it spreading through this vector. Source: http://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/disease/ebola/en/ http://www.who.int/csr/don/archive/disease/ebola/en/
- iterationx 13y agoEbola-Type Infection Passed Thru New York City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmO3hU2_QYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmO3hU2_QYc
- joshu 13y agoHas Madagascar closed its ports?
- jnbiche 13y agoThe problem with all the epidemiological response protocols to Ebola is that so many are based on laboratory tests and not clinical symptoms (which are admittedly complex since they can mimic other more common African hemorrhagic diseases like hantavirus). Normally, that's a highly accurate way to diagnose confirmed cases, but in this instance, these same lab tests were highly misleading, since the genome of the Ebola virus responsible for this outbreak had shifted so much that it can not be detected by some of the lab assays used by regional labs. This discrepancy may have even prolonged the outbreak.
- Fomite 13y agoHantavirus is not only not more common, but not so much a disease in Africa. Africa is full of hemorrhagic diseases: Lassa Fever, Marburg, or Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever. But not so much Hantavirus.
- biehl 13y agoI salute your appropriate username.
- jnbiche 13y agoYou're correct. I was thinking of Lassa when I wrote Hantavirus. Of course, Hantavirus was responsible for the "Four Corners" virus in N. America, and more commonly in S. America, if I recall correctly. It's been over a decade since I worked in infectious disease epi, and even then not in tropical diseases, so I'm lucky to remember anything at all. But my point stands: Africa is full of hemorrhagic fevers, which makes symptomatic diagnosis of Ebola difficult.
- freyfogle 13y agoWant to help from? Please get involved with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team: http://hot.openstreetmap.org http://hot.openstreetmap.org Many of the areas are very badly mapped which makes responding difficult. You can help create up to date maps by tracing aerial imagery: http://hot.openstreetmap.org/projects/guinea_ebola_epidemic http://hot.openstreetmap.org/projects/guinea_ebola_epidemic Here's how to get started: http://hot.openstreetmap.org/get-involved http://hot.openstreetmap.org/get-involved thanks
- StavrosK 13y agoIt looks like all three regions have been fully traced and validated? This is the first time I've seen this, but it looks like there's nothing to do there, to me.
- jaakkoh 13y agoWhile the Ebola response mapping jobs are in pretty good shape there are other open tasks where there is plenty of unmapped territory. With an OSM account you can see the full list at http://tasks.hotosm.org http://tasks.hotosm.org . E.g. http://tasks.hotosm.org/job/468 http://tasks.hotosm.org/job/468 is completely undone (albeit 3 squares are being worked on as I write this) and http://tasks.hotosm.org/job/467 http://tasks.hotosm.org/job/467 has just 3 squares done (with 2 being worked on). Both of these two tasks are linked to US State Department's Humanitarian Information Unit's MapGive program, which BTW has nice video intros/tutorials to getting started with OSM (http://mapgive.state.gov http://mapgive.state.gov). If you have any questions you can ask at HOT email list https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot, Twitter http://twitter.com/hotosm http://twitter.com/hotosm or FB page https://www.facebook.com/hotosm https://www.facebook.com/hotosm -- or IRC (OFTC #hot) http://wiki.osm.org/IRC http://wiki.osm.org/IRC