POSTED 1 NOV 2000
New bugs. New battles.
Five
years after the Ebola virus killed 286 people in Congo, the disease has
reappeared in Uganda. Seventy-three people are dead to date.
Ebola, one of the most destructive and fatal new infectious diseases, causes massive bleeding, and most victims die within a week. The disease is highly contagious -- and untreatable.
A Medical Officer at Lacor hospital in Gulu, 224 miles north of the Ugandan capital, examines a child suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus Oct.17. Already, the fearsome virus has killed a reported 72 people in Uganda. AP Photo/Sayyid Azim
Ebola is one of many "emerging infectious diseases" that are causing alarm among public health types:
In 1997, a bird flu "jumped the species barrier" from chickens to people in Hong Kong. A similar "jump" caused an influenza epidemic that killed about 20 million people in 1918.
Since the U.S. Institute of Medicine published "Emerging Infections"
(see
bibliography) in 1992, the subject has
gotten
considerable attention. According to one definition, "emerging
infections"
are:
One
reason for the renewed concern is the prospect of biological warfare
by
terrorists. But Spielman, an expert in emerging diseases, points to a
second factor: the surge in global transportation. "People are carried
hither and yon, agriculture moves animals and other living things
around.
Just in terms of spread, we are in an unprecedented period."
Transportation matters. Centuries ago, a quick-killing virus like Ebola was unlikely
to spread far, certainly not across the globe. (There were, however,
awful
exceptions. For example, smallpox and other infections carried by
European
colonists decimated native Americans.)
But now that jet planes can lug pathogens across the globe in hours,
we need to worry why pathogens are so crafty, and why diseases can suddenly
"emerge"
and infect thousands or millions.
Care
to join The Why Files for a survey of emerging diseases?
Terry Devitt, editor; S.V. Medaris, designer/illustrator; Jenny Pearson,
project assistant; David Tenenbaum, feature writer; Amy Toburen, content development executive
This filamentous virus causes the intense bleeding of Ebola disease. Courtesy Center for Disease Control, Special Pathogens Branch
new
to humans (such as AIDS in the 1980s), new
to a geographic region (such as West Nile virus in the United
States);
or no longer controlled by drugs that once worked (like malaria and some
bacterial infections that have evolved resistance to drugs).
In the past 25 years, Ebola has broken out in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda.
