PRAY saints for those BATTLING this deadly ebola in W Africa. PRAY Ebola virus cases in West Africa are rising faster than the ability to contain them, the World Health Organization says, as experts warn that the exponential rise could become a worldwide disaster. Ebola spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids, but Osterholm raised a possibility that he said virologists are loath to discuss openly but consider behind closed doors: the prospect that the Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. Osterholm cites a 2012 study by researchers at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg that showed the Ebola Zaire strain behind West Africa’s outbreak could spread by the respiratory route between pigs and monkeys. An infectious disease expert warned in Friday’s New York Times that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa has the potential to alter history as much as any plague has ever done. Health-care workers have been infected with Ebola while treating patients in West Africa. Almost half of the 301 health-care workers who have developed the disease have died.In the three hardest hit countries, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the number of new patients is moving far faster than the capacity to manage them. We need to surge at least three to four times to catch up with the outbreaks, Chan said.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 14:34:02 +0000
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