Ebola Virus Disease History/Statistics, Etiology, and Symptoms

          The Ebola virus disease was first discovered in Africa around 1976 in the countries of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The disease received its name from the Ebola River that is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The most startling statistic regarding the Ebola virus would definitely be that the disease has a case fatality rate as high as 90% (WHO, 2014). The disease was first known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever because of the how the infected individuals would die once this disease was contracted. The Ebola virus is a filovirus, which means it is a member of the Filoviridae family, and has five different species of it (WHO, 2014). These filoviruses have a loop in them, as seen below, and this is one of the main factors that doctors will look for when analyzing the virus.

     These five different strains or species are: Bundibugyo, Zaire, Sudan, Reston and Taï Forest ebolaviruses. Every strain is harmful and deadly in humans except for the Reston strain, which has had no deaths reported after the outbreak in Reston, VA in the 1990’s. Although, more studies need to be conducted with this particular strain of Ebola because they only have one group for data, adult men. This disease appears to have developed from fruit bats, but mainly just from developing countries in remote areas that may not have the proper medical care or a clean area of living. These seem to occur in outbreaks in these developing countries, mainly occurring in Africa. Ebola virus has an incubation period of 2 to 21 days (WHO, 2014). The main symptoms of this disease are pretty clear and doctors can normally tell what is occurring quite quickly. They will start off as a headache, sore throat and just pain all over the body that is followed by more sever symptoms such as vomiting, internal and external hemorrhaging and impaired function of some vital organs (WHO, 2014). These symptoms could possibly show the doctors that you have different diseases, but Ebola can be easily identified through laboratory tests. Overall, if this disease is contracted, there is a very high chance that the infected individual could die due to the intense severity of the disease.
      Bibliography:

            "Ebola virus disease." WHO. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 June 2014.    http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/