77 Understanding Ebola

Disaster movies often portray catastrophes that destroy or at least threaten to destroy Earth’s entire population. In fact, a virus emerged in the 1970s that could have been just that lethal.

Named after a river that traverses the Congo, the Ebola virus originally mani- fested itself in the interior of Africa in 1976. Two strains of the disease, with almost identical symptoms, affected humans: Ebola Zaire and Ebola Sudan. The Sudan strain of Ebola has a 90 percent mortality rate, killing 90 percent of those it infected; however, Zaire, Sudan, with a single individual in a Sudan town quickly Ebola Zaire seemed to erupt in over 50 vil- lages simultaneously. Both strains quickly invaded local hospitals, where needle shar- ing and other unsanitary practices caused the rapid spreading of the infection by bringing people into contact with contaminated blood. If the virus had been enter- ble of spreading through the air or if one infected person had unwittingly tempo- rarily. However so lethal and Ebola might have become a virus would die out, at least within a short period of time there was no one around to infect. Hospital workers in at least one case deserted their workplace in panic, thus halting the administering of potentially unclean, disease-spreading injections.

But Ebola has not disappeared. With no known vaccination or cure in the off- ing, it seems only a matter of time until another epidemic erupts.

77 了解埃博拉

灾难电影常常描绘摧毁或至少威胁要摧毁地球全部人口的 catastrophe。事实上，20世纪70年代出现的一种病毒本可能具有这样的致命性。

埃博拉病毒以穿越刚果的一条河流命名，最初于1976年在非洲内陆出现。该疾病的两个毒株，症状几乎相同，感染了人类：埃博拉扎伊尔型和埃博拉苏丹型。埃博拉苏丹型的死亡率为90%，杀死了90%的感染者；而埃博拉扎伊尔型似乎在50多个村庄同时爆发。两种毒株都迅速侵入当地医院，那里的针头共用和其他不卫生操作，通过让人们接触受污染的血液，导致了感染的快速传播。如果病毒能通过空气传播，或者如果一名感染者无意中暂时传播，然而埃博拉如此致命，病毒可能会消亡，至少在短时间内没有可感染的人。至少在一个案例中，医院工作人员惊慌地逃离了工作场所，从而停止了可能不卫生、传播疾病的注射。

但埃博拉并未消失。由于目前还没有已知的疫苗或治疗方法，下一次疫情爆发似乎只是时间问题。