Ebola panic

Fears that deadly virus could spread to Beijing have mobilized hospitals and treatment centers in the capital

The Ebola virus death toll has hit 1,013 according to a United Nations health organization report released on Monday.

The latest outbreak of the virus began in March this year in Guinea, and has spread to surrounding regions on the African continent. In the five months since, confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria, amid fears that the virus could spread further via travelers who might have had contact with the disease in the affected countries.

The Philippine Department of Health said it was monitoring seven Filipino workers who had recently returned from Ebola-stricken Sierra Leone, and earlier this month, two American doctors working in West Africa were taken home after being infected with the virus.

On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak an international public health emergency, sending alarm bells ringing around the world. The reverberations of the announcement have been felt in Beijing, with hospitals and health agencies mobilizing to take precautions in the event that the virus reaches the capital.

"Declaring Ebola an international public health emergency shows how seriously the World Health Organization is taking the current outbreak, but statements won't save lives," said Dr Bart Janssens, the director of operations for Doctors Without Borders in a press release.

The organization is at the forefront of international efforts to treat those already infected with the disease, and to prevent its further spread.

"We need this statement to translate into immediate action on the ground," said Janssens.

Yu Tao, a member of Songshuhui-Association of Science Communicators and whose research is in the field of virology, said that WHO's designation of the Ebola virus as an international public health emergency signals the possibility that it could become a public health risk to other countries.

A fatal illness

There are a number of reasons that the Ebola virus has elicited such a drastic response from the international community, said Dr Martin Shen in an interview with Metropolitan to explain the disease.

Shen is the founder of Trusted Doctors (xingren.com), a mobile app that connects doctors and their patients together, and serves as a platform for patients to get healthcare advice from trusted sources.

"Firstly, there is no [known cure] for the virus, and secondly, the mortality rates are very high," said Shen. "In those who are infected, mortality rates are between 55 percent and 85 percent."

Symptoms of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) include severe fatigue, fever, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, and rashes that appear all over the body, resulting in the patient bleeding.

"The virus replicates extremely fast in the body and infects many different cells, causing the death of a lot of tissues," said Shen. "Unfortunately the body during this process also releases a lot of chemicals that amplify the response, and cause what we refer to as a type of Hemorrhagic Fever, where the patient goes into shock. The disease progresses so quickly that the body does not have time to mount an immune response, hence the reason why we see so many people dying from this virus."

According to a report released by WHO, Ebola is transmitted through direct human-to-human contact, with infection spreading through the sharing of blood, secretions or other bodily fluids. The virus can also be contracted through indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids, according to the report.

"To date, there has been no evidence of respiratory transmission, as occurs with the flu," said Shen. "In the case of West Africa, the ritual washing at funerals is presumed to be a major cause of continued transmission. Previous outbreaks have been caused by sharing of needles in clinics."

The first case of EVD was documented in August 1976, when a patient by the name of Mabalo was treated for malarial symptoms in a clinic in the Republic of Zaire (The Democratic Republic of the Congo). He was given an injection for his symptoms, and the syringe needle was subsequently used on a number of other patients. At the time, hospital staff had no way of knowing that Mabalo was carrying a strain of what was only later classified as EVD.

The virus quickly spread to neighboring villages. By October of that year, Ebola-like symptoms were being reported in patients in Sudan, resulting in the deaths of 35 cotton factory workers in Nzara. By the end of the year, the virus had claimed the lives of 397 people.

According to the WHO report, there have since been more than 20 outbreaks in central and eastern Africa, but the most recent outbreak is the first time the virus has infected humans in West Africa.

The same report mentioned that there are five known strains of Ebola around the world. According to the report, the Reston ebolavirus strain of the virus, or RESTV, has been found in Philippines and China. Although it can infect humans, there have been no reported illnesses or deaths in humans from this species to date.