Ebola scare flushes out guerrillas

The Guardian ^ | May 12, 2003 | Rory Carroll

[WordMerchant]

Ebola scare flushes out guerrillas

Rory Carroll in Kitgum, Uganda

Monday May 12, 2003

The Guardian

One of Africa's most feared rebel groups, the Lord's Resistance Army, has abandoned its bases in southern Sudan and crossed into Uganda in an apparent attempt to escape a suspected outbreak of the deadly disease Ebola.

Several hundred of the Ugandan guerrillas were spotted yesterday moving south towards the Ugandan town of Kitgum in an unusually large deployment. It is feared that they may carry the virus. Biologists from the World Health Organisation are expected to arrive in the border region tomorrow to establish what illness has killed at least seven people in Sudan in the past two weeks.

Health officials in Kitgum believe the real death toll is 45 and say that all the symptoms - fever, diarrhoea and vomiting blood - are characteristic of Ebola. If confirmed, it would be the region's third outbreak in as many years.

Ebola, which starts with a fever and headache which can lead to massive internal bleeding, is passed on by infected body fluids, with some strains killing 90% of victims.

The Ugandan health ministry said that although there were no confirmed cases of Ebola fever in the country, eight border districts had been put on alert.

Ugandan army officials said a 700-strong rebel force had crossed back into the country from Sudan and was moving south through the bush on foot, a concentration seldom seen since the government acquired helicopter gunships.

Villagers have crowded into towns to escape rebel bands who roam the countryside, looting and abducting children as forced conscripts for a war which they say is against the southern-dominated government of President Yoweri Museveni. But most victims of the rebel ambushes and massacres are civilians.

The LRA leader, Joseph Kony, is a messianic recluse who blends Christianity and Islam. Despite Sudan allowing the Ugandan army to cross the border to flush out the rebels, many of Mr Kony's fighters have remained hidden in Sudan. Ugandan commanders in Kitgum say the fact that they have emerged now suggests they are fleeing a suspected Ebola outbreak. Opiya Lakana, a civilian security officer in Kitgum, said families were pouring into town after rebel scouts were sighted on the outskirts. "We hear more [rebels] are coming because of the disease."

[WordMerchant]

From Newsday, April 2:

An analysis of cases in Hong Kong from February 22 to March 22 found the virus was not hitting the customarily susceptible populations -- the very young and very old -- as the mean age of patients was 52. Similarly, few patients were smokers or people with underlying health problems. Autopsies revealed the virus caused parts of the lungs to hemorrhage blood, as would be the case with a hemorrhagic fever virus such as Ebola

[Gopher Broke]

These guerrillas are the "good guys"...they are black, Sudanese Christians...fighting the Islamic regime that controls the country.

About 2 million Christians have died via combat, torture and abuse in the last 10 years or so.

[RonF]

An analysis of cases in Hong Kong from February 22 to March 22 found the virus was not hitting the customarily susceptible populations -- the very young and very old -- as the mean age of patients was 52.

This analysis shows nothing of the kind. "Mean" is a statistical term meaning "average". So if you have a group of victims that are mostly elderly, but includes a few infants/toddlers/children, a mean of 52 is exactly what you would expect, even if no persons between the ages of, say, 20 and 55 were affected. The mean is an inadequate statistic to establish the point above; you need to look at the actual distribution.

[RonF]

These guerrillas are the "good guys"...they are black, Sudanese Christians...fighting the Islamic regime that controls the country.

It's quite true that the regime in Sudan is from the north, is Islamic, and is trying to eradicate the Christian and animist south. However, this has nothing to do with the Lord's Resistance Army. Here's a reference. The LRA is run by a monster who hacks up adults, kidnaps children, indoctrinates them with an evil doctrine, and uses them to try to overthrow the Ugandan government.

[bonfire]

Our church is sponsering 14 "Lost Boys" from Sudan. They were left orphaned as little boys after their parents were murdered. It's an amazing story and a Testament to their Christian faith. http://www.sudanlostboys.com/

[AdmSmith]

It's quite true that the regime in Sudan is from the north, is Islamic, and is trying to eradicate the Christian and animist south.

Furthermore, LRA is obtaining support from the Islamist Sudaneese government. Let the environment, i.e. Ebola, take care of them.

[AdmSmith]

No, Ebola is a filovirus read more here
http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/3035/Filoviruses.html

and SARS is a coronavirus, they are not related.

[rvoitier]

Nice article and no offense intended but do you really think this is 'Breaking News' material?

[American in Israel]

If Ebola is actualy happening bad enough in the bush to cause armys to move, it is breaking and a half.

These guys know a lot more of what is actually happening in the bush than anybody. The significance of them moving in large groups despite the air superiority of their enemies is a very bad sign.

Unless of course Ebola coming from the south and Sars from the east is old hat.

[per loin]

Similarly, few patients were smokers

Good catch. I had suspected that to be the case.

[isom35]

if some of these guys in up in the tiny town of
Magilla, they will become Magilla Guerrillas.

[xm177e2]

These guerrillas are the "good guys"...they are black, Sudanese Christians...fighting the Islamic regime that controls the country.

The LRA are Christians... in name only. They are wackos who commit horrible crimes against humanity. They are not good guys by any reasonable definition.

[WordMerchant]

MEASLES, HIV, EBOLA MAY ALL BE
RELATED - STUDY

Mar. 27 /99

Reuters

WASHINGTON -- Researchers were cited as reporting on Friday that the viruses that cause measles, AIDS, Ebola and influenza may all be distantly related, perhaps descended from a common ancestor.

Scientists who have imaged the viruses say they all use a very similar mechanism to enter the cells they infect.

Virologist Robert Lamb, a member of the team at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Northwestern University in Chicago that did the work, was quoted as saying, in a statement, "The structure of this molecule shows that a widely dissimilar virus, a virus that everybody thought was very different from the other group, ends up in fact having remarkable similarities.

It suggests a common ancestor among all these viruses, where one would have thought them not to be related at all." Writing in the journal Molecular Cell, the researchers were cited as saying that they used X-ray crystallography to look at the "fusion protein" of a paramyxovirus. The paramyxoviruses cause diseases such as measles, mumps, croup and viral pneumonia.

The fusion protein serves as a grappling hook that snags the infected cell, pulling it together with the virus. The virus can then inject its own genetic material into the cell, forcing it to pump out copy after copy of the virus. The researchers were, according to this story, surprised to find their fusion proteins so closely resemble those of other viruses, such as HIV and Ebola.

[AdmSmith]

Well, all viruses are distantly related, but some are more related to each other...

Take a look at this http://web.uct.ac.za/microbiology/tutorial/vf_fst-h.htm

For many years classification of new and old viruses will be a vibrant research area. Viruses like bacteria shares and exchange genetic material, so it will be difficult to find the least common ancestor.