Posted on 05/21/2006 3:13:29 PM PDT by traumer
KILLER BUG AIR SCARE
A WOMAN who arrived in London on a flight from Africa yesterday is reported to have died from the deadly and contagious ebola virus.
Panic has spread among cabin crew and hospital staff after the death of the 38-year-old Briton.
The unnamed woman is understood to work at an embassy in the African kingdom of Lesotho.
Before boarding a Virgin Atlantic flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow she visited a doctor complaining of flu-like symptoms.
She was allowed to fly, but during Flight VS602 to the UK she suffered a violent fit which left her unconscious.
Cabin crew and passengers rushed to her aid but towards the end of the flight she began to vomiting.
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When the Airbus A340-600, carrying 267 passengers and crew, touchdown at Heathrow she was rushed to nearby Hillingdon Hospital, West London.
Her symptoms matched those of the viral haemorraghing fever, ebola. The results of a post mortem are awaited.
Virgin Atlantic cabin crew who came into contact with the woman have been told to monitor their health. One said: "We are now terrified what we may have caught."
Deadly ebola is often characterised by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat.
How is then, that whole villages die off in Africa from it?
That's what happens when you eat monkeys.
Doh! This could only have come from a gubmint website.
Does the aircraft air conditioner unit recycle the used air? Everyone might have gotten a bit of it.
"Ebola isn't an airborne virus so the odds of it spreading are very slim. There is definitely no chance of it becoming a pandemic."
So tell us how it is spread, Dr. COEXERJ145? It has wiped out a number of villages in Africa.
parentheses=quotation marks (indicating skepticism)
"The epidemic of cocoliztli from 1545 to 1548 killed an estimated 5 million to 15 million people, or up to 80% of the native population of Mexico (Figure 1). In absolute and relative terms the 1545 epidemic was one of the worst demographic catastrophes in human history, approaching even the Black Death of bubonic plague, which killed approximately 25 million in western Europe from 1347 to 1351 or about 50% of the regional population."
"The cocoliztli epidemic from 1576 to 1578 cocoliztli epidemic killed an additional 2 to 2.5 million people, or about 50% of the remaining native population."
How is it transmitted?
>
> Ebola virus is spread through close personal contact with a person who
> is very ill with the disease. In previous outbreaks, person-to-person
> spread frequently occurred among hospital care workers or family
> members who were caring for an ill person infected with Ebola virus.
> Transmission of the virus has also occurred as a result of hypodermic
> needles being reused in the treatment of patients. Reusing needles is
> a common practice in developing countries, such as Zaire and Sudan,
> where the health care system is underfinanced. Medical facilities in
> the United States do not reuse needles.
>
> Ebola virus can also be spread from person to person through sexual
> contact. Close personal contact with persons who are infected but show
> no signs of active disease is very unlikely to result in infection.
> Patients who have recovered from an illness caused by Ebola virus do
> not pose a serious risk for spreading the infection. However, the
> virus may be present in the genital secretions of such persons for a
> brief period after their recovery, and therefore it is possible they
> can spread the virus through sexual contact.
>
> Ref: CDC
>
> Is Ebola airborne?
>
> The Zaire and Sudan strains are not airborne. The Reston strain
> appears to have been transmittable by airborne means, but that strain
> is not harmful to humans.
http://www.ndcrt.org/data/Health_Facts/Ebola_virus_FAQs
Many African peoples will gather around their sick, and the virii are shed through bodily fluids including sweat, vomit, blood, and other secretions.
Close physical contact between family members is one vector, re-use of needles (often, ironicly, in vaccination campaigns or hospitals), and the practices of local shamans in some instances may spread the virus in a relatively small geographic area.
There is a normal funerary procedure of washing the body, often performed by relatives, and grieving relatives ofthe come into contact with the body as well, while the virii are still infectious.
Marburg Virus, which is also a hemmoragic fever has similar vectors.
If the person died of Ebola or complications, every object contacted while the person was sweating would have had some viral load.
Immediate contact with that surface by another person may or may not spread the virus to the person who subsequently touched the surface. Immediate contact with the person and the secretions increases the risk. (There is a reason people wear those suits, folks.)
Vomit, blood, and other bodily fluids could produce the same results.
How Ebola was eliminated as a possibility in the space of a few hours, I don't know. That is pretty fast for test results.
Note, too, that Lesotho faces one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world, leading some demographers to predict that the country's population will begin declining in several years if current trends continue. (Source: infoplease.com ).
You have been pinged to this post because of a previously expressed interest in another infectious disease with potentially serious implications. Please pardon me if you did not wish to be pinged to this article.
Basically in Africa one person gets it (from eating or being bitten by whatever is the natural reservoir of Ebola...
They die, and the problem in Africa is that there are all these elaborate body-washing rituals for the dead and that's how others keep getting exposed...burying people.
Thanks for the ping, Joe, and please keep me on the list.
Whether Ebola or not, certainly sounds like some viral hemorrhagic fever.
The latest I heard is they had discovered some fruit bats that were carriers. Anybody else hear about this?
A serious problem with posted articles is people not understanding the nature of foreign sources...the Mirror is an over-the-top TABLOID; but people don't really know the British Media; same thing with that "India Daily" source (Which is a website that fakes news articles based in New Jersey.)
I hate it when bad Tom Clancy novels come true.
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More like a Steven King novel. I am reminded of the novel "The Stand".
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