The march of ebola

This is now by far the worst ebola outbreak the world has ever seen, with 3,400 people dead, and 7,500 confirmed cases, though the true figure is thought to be much higher. The deadliest until now saw 280 people die in 1976 in Zaire, now Congo.

Most of the deaths have happened in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, with the World Health Organisation expressing concern at the poor state of the health services in those countries. Liberia says it is short of ambulances, and that it has only a third of the number of treatment centres it needs.

Now alarm is sweeping through Spain after a nurse who had been treating two missionaries who caught ebola in Africa, was found to be infected herself. It had been hoped that the stringent safety precautions available in modern hospitals would prevent the virus spreading.

Her husband and five other people are now in quarantine and another 50 are being monitored, while the European Commission has asked Spain for an explanation as to how the nurse became infected.

Ebola outbreak deadliest ever

The current Ebola outbreak is by far the worst the world has yet experienced. So far more than 930 people have died in West Africa, while more than 1,700 cases have been reported. The previous worst death toll came in 1976, when 280 people died in Congo and Zaire.

The mortality rate this time appears to be about 55%, though it can reach 90%. The World Health Organisation has now declared an international health emergency, but it is not proposing any bans on trade or travel.

Ebola is a fearsome disease, with symptoms that include high fever, internal and external bleeding, and damage to the central nervous system. There is no vaccine and no cure.

One of the obstacles to containing its spread is the poor state of the health services in the countries it has struck, with a lack of medical staff, laboratory technicians and protective clothing for doctors and nurses.  (See also my blogs of April 4 and June 7.)

Dengue fever

Honduras has declared a state of emergency following the deaths of 16 people in an outbreak of dengue fever. Altogether more than 12,000 people have been infected with the virus that is borne by mosquitoes.

The disease causes flu-like symptoms and occasionally develops into a potentially lethal form called haemorrhagic dengue. Honduras’s worst outbreak happened in 2010, when 83 people died.

Earlier this year, the authorities in Brazil reported a steep rise in cases of dengue, with more than 200,000 people infected compared with 70,000 in the same period of 2012, though the health minister said most cases were less severe.

The World Health Organisation says that across the world there are 30 times as many cases as there were 50 years ago, with up to 100 million infections a year in more than 100 countries.

Malaria - a pugnacious parasite

New drug-resistant strains of the parasite that causes malaria have been identified in western Cambodia.    There have been reports of drug resistance in the region since 2008, and the problem has now spread to other parts of South-east Asia.

Scientists investigating the new organism say that all the most effective drugs developed in the last few decades ‘have been one by one rendered useless by the remarkable ability of this parasite to mutate and develop resistance.’   They do not know why this part of Cambodia should be such a hotbed of resistance.

In 2010, there were more than 200 million cases of malaria and 600,000 deaths – 90 per cent of them in Africa.   The World Health Organisation has made preventing the spread of resistant strains a major objective.  

See also my blogs of 11 April, 30 May, and 24 Sept, 2009; 21 Oct, 2010; 23 Sept, 2011 and 23 May, 2012.

*I’ve just started to post a series of videos on Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters.   This is the first -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Bgf-xHHGE

Flu - here we go again?

 

We’ve been here before.   The world is once again anxious about a strain of bird flu spreading through China.    This one is called H7N9. It has infected 60 people and caused 13 deaths.

The World Health Organisation says it is being spread by direct contact with infected birds, and that there is no evidence of direct human-to-human transmission.   Nor it seems are there yet any cases outside China.

Another strain of bird flu, H5N1, (viruses pictured above) has caused the deaths of more than 320 people in China and four other countries since 2003.     In 2009, the WHO declared a pandemic alert over H1N1 swine flu, which killed more than 18,000 people.  

So-called ‘Spanish flu’ caused one of the worst epidemics in history at the end of the First World War, carrying off up to 70 million people.    (See also my blogs of 5 Feb; 14, 30 April; 13 May; 6, 11, July; 24 Oct, 13 Dec, 2009.)