Volume 1 (1999/2000)
Issue
1 (March 1999)
Issue
2 (Nov. 1999)
Issue 3 (Dec. 1999)
Issue 4 (Feb. 2000)
Issue 5 (March 2000)
Issue 6 (April 2000)
Issue
7 (May 2000)
Volume 2 (2000/2001)
Issue 1 (Sept. 2000)
Issue 2 (Oct. 2000)
Issue 3 (Jan. 2001)
Issue 4 (March 2001)
Issue 5 (April 2001)
Issue 6 (May 2001)
Volume 3 (2001)
Issue 1 (Sept. 2001)
Issue 2 (Nov. 2001)
Categories
Sport: 1
2 3
Lifestyles: 1 2
3
Commentary: 1 2
3
Review: 1 2
3
Writing: 1 2
3
Event: 1 2
3
Ebola Virus II
Catherine Howard
Regina Mundi, Cork
In Atlanta, Georgia, US, there is an internationally renowned institution.
It employs 7,000 people and has a budget of $2 billion a year. It is called
the CDC - the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the first
biocontainment suits was designed and tested at the CDC and it was one
of their staffers that noticed high rates of Kaposi's sarcom occurring
in the big cities of the Eastern States. Her observations would lead to
the discovery of presence of AIDS.
A sample of the nurse's blood arrived in the CDC. They tested it and
found that it contained worms.
The only other time anyone had seen worms was with Marburg. If this was
Marburg, they were in serious trouble. A laboratory in Belgium still had
some Marburg serum since 1967. The laboratory only had enough serum for
four people. They injected the nurse with it, but it had no effect. It
was not Marburg. It was something new and unknown.
Back at the CDC in Atlanta, samples of the virus were being rigorously
tested. It was photographed using an electron microscope. Marburg particles
are straight and thick, but the particles of the new disease were stringy
and curled in a loop at the end (known as the "shepherd's crook").
It resembled the rabies virus, but it was longer. So while it was still
in testing, it was nicknamed "stretched rabies".
The person or persons who discovers a previously unknown virus get to
name it. Karl Johnson of (at that time) Special Pathogens at the CDC,
was leading the team who were investigating the new virus. They decided
to name it Ebola, after the Ebola river near which the village of Yambuku
was situated.
Then all of a sudden, the disease burnt itself out, and the infections
in Zaire and Sudan ceased. There had been more than 550 cases and 340
deaths.
No one can prove that one thing or another stopped the outbreak. The
most plausible theory is that the disease itself was so "hot"
(i.e. so virulent, so infectious, etc.) that people had little or no time
to infect others before the disease took them too.
Three years later, Ebola reared its ugly head again in Sudan, but on
a much smaller scale. There were 34 cases and 22 deaths.
It would be 1989 before it would be seen again.
In Fredericksbourg, Virginia - ten miles outside of Washington D.C. -
is Fort Detrick, an army base. On this base there is a building which
spans over fifteen acres of land. Large steel vents sit atop the pyramid-shaped
building - they expel filtered air from the most secure laboratories in
the United States, if not the world.
It is USAMRIID - the United States Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases. During the Cold War it was the Institute of Chemical
and Biological Warfare and Defence.
In
November 1989, they received a sample from a Dan Dalgard of the Reston
Primate Quarantine Unit. In that unit, monkeys from Fertile Farms of the
Philippines were kept under quarantine for a month before being shipped
around the country. Recently, monkeys had becoming sick and dying. Dalgard
was the vet in charge of looking after the monkeys. He decided to send
a sample of one of the sick monkey's blood to USAMRIID. Nancy Jaax received
the sample. She was head of Veterinary Pathology. She tested the sample.
It was positive for Ebola. This was a major crisis. Ebola had never been
outside Africa; suddenly it was in the Philippines. And in Reston, Virginia
- ten miles from the White House.
It was decided that the CDC and USAMRIID would work together to contain
the outbreak. Having the two institutions work together was no small feat.
The CDC is federal, and USAMRIID is the army, and many conflicting opinions
were voiced.
However they managed to put their differences aside and collaborate and
drew up a plan to "nuke" (to decontaminate, to kill everything
within) the unit and therefore kill all the monkeys. It was the only way
to stop it. They now were certain it was Ebola, although no human cases
had them suspecting that it might be a new strain.
Over a period of three days they nuked the entire building, killing and
disposing of all the monkeys. Most were sick or dying already. Two workers
became ill, but not with Ebola.
It was eventually determined that it was Ebola, but a new strain that
was harmless to humans, but deadly to simians. They named it Ebola Reston.
Although it appears not to infect humans, it is still classified as a
Level 4 virus, just in case.
What the outbreak in Reston proved, was that Ebola was airborne. The
infection started in one room, but soon spread to another, even though
there had been absolutely no contact between them - other than the air
that flowed through the air conditioning system. Some time later, Nancy
Jaax conducted an experiment at USAMRIID, where she put healthy monkeys
and monkeys infected with Ebola across a room from each other. There was
seemingly no contact between them. Healthy monkeys became ill. If Ebola
is airborne, it has the potential to be an extinction level event - it
could annihilate us all. However, Dr. J. McCormick of the CDC, who was
part of that operation at Reston, argues that Ebola is, in fact, difficult
to catch. Back in the Ebola outbreaks in Sudan and Zaire, he spent a night
in a makeshift hut with a woman dying of Ebola. During the night he accidentally
stuck himself with a needle that was covered in infected blood. He never
caught Ebola.
Ebola Zaire resurfaced in Kikwit, Zaire in 1995. Kikwit is a city of
400,000 located near Kinshasa, the capital. The outbreak seems to have
originated with a patient who had surgery in a hospital in Kikwit on April
10th. The surgical team developed Ebola-like symptoms. The CDC and the
WHO (World Health Organisation) worked with local medical teams to control
it.
In 1996, ten people died in Gabon from Ebola and later on the same year
the first South African victim died. She was a forty-year-old nurse who
had worked with an infected patient.
Research into Ebola and other Level 4 viruses continues. We can only hope that in the near future a vaccine and maybe even a cure will be found for them. New viruses are emerging all the time, but none are as terrifying, or as destructive, as Ebola.