It's no joke at all that this disease is killing faster than HIV. The height of it all is that it has no cure and it can be passed around easily. A doctor who has fought the Ebola virus in Liberia where it infected two American doctors today gave a terrifying insight into how medics put their fears aside and their lives on the line to treat patients in the current outbreak taking a grip in Africa.
Sharing more photos from infected victims of how the stage 2 symptoms look like and when affected the person only lives for 21days.
Dr Spencer, who is British, volunteered for medical charity Doctors Without Borders in Guinea and Liberia - the crucible of the current outbreak which has killed more than 600 and infected around 1,200.
To minimise the risk of infection they have to wear thick rubber boots that come up to their knees, an impermeable body suit, gloves, a face mask, a hood and goggles to ensure no air at all can touch their skin.They are only allowed to work for between four and six weeks in the field because the conditions are so gruelling.
According to the World Health Organisation, Ebola is transmitted by direct contact with bodily fluids or by touching anything that has had them on it. It is often spread through family and friends because they come into close contact with victims as they care for them. The incubation period is two to 21 days and after that it can kill within days due to internal bleeding. There is no known cure.
A rising temperature, headache and sore throat are the first signs the Ebola virus is invading the body, attacking the building blocks of the immune system. As the disease progresses, victims suffer blood shot eyes, as tiny blood vessels burst, causing bleeding from the eyes, ears, mouth, and other orifices
Here are the basic things you need to know about symptoms of ebola when someone is infected.
You have a temperature and no appetite. Your head is aching and you're throat is sore. It may appear as though a common cold is lurking, but unbeknownst to you the vicious Ebola virus has started to attack your immune system.
The virus destroys the same cells as those targeted by HIV, though the Ebola infection is more aggressive, wiping out the building blocks of the body's immune system.
It has an incubation period - that is the time from infection to when the first symptoms present themselves - of between two and 21 days, increasing the risk of the highly-infectious illness spreading. As soon as a victim starts to suffer the sudden onset of the disease, the fever, crippling headache and muscle pain, they are already contagious.
The virus is transmitted through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals.
Once a human is infected, the disease can spread quickly within a community, with health workers and family members of victims at particular risk.
Where a victim has breaks in the skin, blood seeps out, as the disease takes hold. The virus has a death rate of up to 90 per cent, and is highly-contagious, spreading through contact with an infected person's blood, secretions, organs and other bodily fluids
No comments:
Post a Comment