All you need to know about the disease
Ebola virus disease, formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is described by the World Health Organisation as “a severe, often fatal illness”. It first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks — in Nzara, Sudan, and in Yambuku, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter was in a village situated near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name.
The virus normally affects people living in or near tropical rainforests. It is introduced into the human population through contact with the sweat, blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as primates, bats and antelope.
The virus then spreads through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) and indirect contact with environ- ments contaminated with such fluids.
A big problem in West Africa is that burial ceremonies, in which mourners have direct contact with the corpse, can increase the spread of the disease because a person can transmit the virus even after death.
Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for another seven weeks.
Symptoms begin with fever, muscle pain and a sore throat, then rapidly escalate to vomiting, diarrhoea and internal and external bleeding.
Health workers are at serious risk of contracting the disease — two US doctors have already contracted it, and a Liberian medic has died.
There is no vaccine or cure, and testing to confirm the virus must be done with the highest level of bio-hazard protection.
A significant problem is that families lose faith in Western medicine, which cannot yet cure the patients. They then take them home to traditional village healers, which often leads the disease to spread.
The WHO is calling this the largest outbreak ever recorded of the disease.
But there have been sporadic outbreaks before, mainly in Uganda, the DRC, Sudan and Gabon.
In the worst previous outbreak, in 2000 in Uganda, 425 people were infected, of whom just over half died. — © AN explosion killed at least 65 people and injured more than 120 at a factory in China that makes wheels for US carmakers, including General Motors, state media said, as the country suffered its worst industrial accident in a year.
The government said the blast in the wealthy eastern province of Jiangsu occurred in a workshop that polishes wheel hubs.
A preliminary investigation suggested that the explosion was caused by negligence. Two officials from the company have been held by authorities.
There were more than 200 workers at the Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products company when the explosion struck, and 45 died immediately.
A fire at a poultry slaughterhouse in the northeast province of Jilin in June 2013 killed 120 people.— UGANDA’S constitutional court on Friday overturned tough anti-gay laws that had been branded draconian and “abominable” by rights groups, saying they had been wrongly passed by parliament.
Human rights activists, the UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon and other world leaders described the decision as “a victory for the rule of law”.
Cheering gay rights activists celebrated the ruling.
The legislation was signed by Uganda’s veteran President Yoweri Museveni in February, recommending that homosexuals be jailed for life. It also outlawed the promotion of homosexuality and obliged Ugandans to denounce gays to the authorities. — AFP