Newspaper Article

Health experts fight to contain Ebola outbreak

Tim Butcher and Roger Highfield, The Telegraph

2000

Overview

Ebola has been called the \"apocalypse bug\" and has already caught the imagination of Hollywood scriptwriters. Dustin Hoffman battled the virus in Outbreak, one of several films to revel in the horrifying way it kills. Most deaths occur around day 12 as a result of organ failure. The virus comes in several strains. The least deadly kills about half those infected and the most deadly around 90 per cent. Scientists study the virus behind airlocks, and wear protective suits. The virus was named after a river in northern Congo where it was discovered in 1976. It takes certain circumstances for Ebola to take hold, since small outbreaks in rural areas often go undetected. The virus is not readily transmitted without close contact with an infected person. In the 1995 epidemic that killed 244 people in Kikwit, Zaire, one factor was the ritual washing of corpses, which put people at risk of contact with infected body fluids.

• Publisher: Postmedia Network Inc