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What happensto Ebolasurvivors?
The letter we allneed to write
Have we learnedanything aboutEbola since1976?
This story was published: 1 DAY AGO OCTOBER 18, 2014 12:21PM
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Pigs, plants and the Black Death: Have we learnedanything about
Ebola since 1976?
Video Image
YOU might think our knowledge of Ebola would have grown since
the virus was
first diagnosed in 1976.
But looking at past reports, its not clear weve learned
much.
With previous outbreaks affecting just a few hundred people a
year, and mostly
confined to Africa, we may have been complacent.
But now cases number in the thousands, its time to consider
whether we missed a
number of opportunities to prevent this crisis.
EMMA REYNOLDS
RIGHT NOW IN LIFESTYLE
STORY BY
What is Ebola?
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YOU might think our knowledge of Ebola would have grown since
the virus was
first diagnosed in 1976.
But looking at past reports, its not clear weve learned
much.
With previous outbreaks affecting just a few hundred people a
year, and mostly
confined to Africa, we may have been complacent.
But now cases number in the thousands, its time to consider
whether we missed a
number of opportunities to prevent this crisis.
EMMA REYNOLDS
RIGHT NOW IN LIFESTYLE
This story was published: 1 DAY AGO OCTOBER 18, 2014 12:21PM
SHARE TEXT SIZE
Pigs, plants and the Black Death: Have we learnedanything about
Ebola since 1976?
Video Image
STORY BY
What is Ebola?
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Ebola in the news from 1976 to 2014
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Golden girl Stephanie Rice
JULY 1979
Infectious plagues have not been, nor are they likely soon to
be, eliminated from
our world, according to medical journal Annals of Internal
Medicine.
The article compared Ebola with the lethal Marburg disease,
noting that African
monkeys were not at first identified as sources of that
virus.
Thus the origins of the devastating epidemics caused by Ebola
virus in Sudan and
Zaire was completely obscure to the international teams rapidly
assembled to deal
with them in 1976.
Mortality rates ranged from 50 to 60 per cent in Sudan to nearly
90 per cent in Zaire,
said the paper just like today.
Several features of these epidemics were noteworthy and
frightening, it added,
Elles most iconic covers
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Several features of these epidemics were noteworthy and
frightening, it added,
relating the death of a patient bleeding and in shock after a
week of fever.
The Australian government bought 12 isolators to be used in case
of infection. Source: Supplied
JANUARY 1982
Concerned by the spread of Ebola and other viruses to Europe and
the US, the
Australian government bought 12 isolators for transporting
infectious patients to
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Australian government bought 12 isolators for transporting
infectious patients to
quarantine, The Canberra Times reported.
Doctors at Melbourne hospital Fairfield told the paper they
hoped they would never
be needed.
The isolators were lightweight units that cost $1200 each and
could be carried by
four people.
Each consisted of a stretcher to hold patient and air-supply
unit, with a plastic cover
fitted with gloved sleeves suspended over it from a frame.
The contraptions were still being used six years later. The
department of health said
that while the risk of a person contracting Lassa fever, Ebola,
Marburg or Crimean-
Congo haemorrhagic fever was relatively low, it was a real
risk.
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JULY 1991
Dr Murphy uses one word to describe his reaction to looking at
an electron
microscope images of long, thin particles of the deadly Ebola
virus: Scary.
The world was focused on the threat of AIDS, but an American
scientist visiting
Australia warned that Ebola also posed a risk, The Canberra
Times reported.
Dr Fred Murphy from the Centre for Infectious Disease Control in
Georgia had
observed the Ebola virus in the 1970s, and in 1989 saw it
isolated from monkeys
imported by air from the Philippines.
He showed that viruses that are harmless or only moderately
lethal in monkeys
could cause lethal epidemics in a larger primate species namely,
humans. It has
already happened at least three times.
The newspaper said AIDS seemed to have crossed to humans,
probably in Africans
whose immune systems were weakened by malnutrition or the
parasite diseases ...
The West may be paying a heavy price for its neglect of human
health in ThirdThe West may be paying a heavy price for its neglect
of human health in Third
World countries.
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A Canberra Times image from an Ebola story in 1995. Source:
Supplied
MARCH 1995
A letter to ANU newspaper Woronis Weird Science column asked:
How dangerous
are viruses and diseases to the human race? Could a virus like
the Ebola virus or
AIDS make us extinct?
The writer replied that Ebola although hasnt gone to the outside
world yet, lesser
versions of it have been known to kill large chunks of
villages.
He described the virus as getting into the brain, sending the
victim mad and breaking
down cell walls until they become a pile of goo.
He continued: If something like the Ebola virus hit somewhere in
Australia, the area
would be sectioned off for a few weeks, confusion would reign,
most people in the
area would die.
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A 1990s Ebola graphic from The Canberra Times shows we know
little more now. Source: Supplied
MAY 1995
The World Health Organisation said deaths had reached their
highest level since
1976, and that a second outbreak had occurred.
WHOs assistant director said Ebola was one of the deadliest
viruses we know but
was not a public-health emergency in the sense of a wild
spread.
Another WHO official said the virus seems to be a self-limiting
disease, reported
the Associated Press.
WHO said two of three previous outbreaks had originated in
hospitals with very poor
hygiene and a third was caused by African funeral rituals that
involve cutting open a
corpse.
Once you institute precautions, and make sure youre not using
contaminated
needles, you can contain the virus, said CDC infectious disease
specialist Dr Ruth
Berkelman.
But the head of WHOS Africa office said the danger of the virus
spreading could
not be ruled out with the Congolese city of Kikwit (site of the
second outbreak)
accessible by air.
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SEPTEMBER 1999
The hunt for a cure was on, with the Times Higher Education
Supplement looking at
research into a folk cure used in traditional African
medicine.
It said that little was known of the molecular biology of the
virus or the mechanisms
by which it caused disease.
A plant extract derived from the seeds of the Garcinia kola tree
was believed by the
Bio-Resources Development and Conservation program to inhibit
the virus.
The Maryland institute now needed funding to develop the
research, wrote The
Times, but the main barrier may be financial.
Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest resources in
the development of
drugs against extremely rare tropical diseases, it added.
An Ebola virus image from a 1999 Stanford medical paper. Source:
Supplied
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DECEMBER 2000
With annual cases in the hundreds again, the New York Times
related the tales of
Ebola survivors.
Ugandans who had seen others die in pools of blood told of
spouses leaving them
and neighbours burning belongings and even homes, despite their
poverty.
Many were shunned by their communities, or had walls built
around them as fearMany were shunned by their communities, or had
walls built around them as fear
spread. An education campaign was in progress to ensure
survivors were accepted
back into their towns.
There were four known strains, with the worst still killing 90
per cent of those who
caught it.
The article reported that the outbreak appeared to have run its
course. But a Ugandan
Red Cross worker admitted: Even now, Im afraid. If you joke with
Ebola it will
joke with you.
Contemporary artwork from the Black Death. Source: News
Limited
FEBRUARY 2002
Could Ebola have been behind the Black Death? asked ABC
News.
Researchers said the speed of the medieval illnesss spread
tallied with Ebola more
than the bubonic plague.
They said that historical descriptions of the Black Death
sounded like the
haemorrhagic fever caused by an Ebola-like virus.
Such fever strikes fast and causes blood vessels to burst
underneath the skin,
bringing out welts, similar to what British medical texts from
the Middle Agesbringing out welts, similar to what British medical
texts from the Middle Ages
describe as Gods tokens, they noted.
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The search for a drug that can fight Ebola continues. Source:
AFP
NOVEMBER 2012
Ebola had by now been linked with fruit bats, monkeys, insects,
birds and pigs but
now a study suggested that the deadliest form of the virus could
be transmitted by air
between species, said the BBC.
Scientists from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found that
pigs infected with
this form of Ebola could pass the disease on to macaques without
any direct contact
between the species.
Dr Gary Kobinger said that if pigs did play a role in human
outbreaks it would be a
very easy point to intervene. It would be easier to vaccinate
pigs against Ebola than
humans.
Dr Larry Zeitlin, president of Mapp Biopharmaceuticals, told BBC
News: Its an
impressive study that not only raises questions about the
reservoir of Ebola in the
wild, but more importantly elevates concerns about Ebola as a
public health threat.
The thought of airborne transmission is pretty frightening.
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