So far, the ebola virus outbreak has killed at least 2,300 from a total of 4,300 victims over the past six months. The concentration of the outbreak is in West Africa but experts fear that it might spread to more developed regions, or the whole world.
On September 4, the World Health Organization revealed that their situation is getting worse as they underwent 'severe budget cuts' that makes it hard for them to control the epidemic. Another thing that concerns health experts is the ebola cluster in Nigeria brought about by a doctor who treated patients and socialized with other residents. This doctor is confirmed as one of those three new people who have contracted the disease.
These scenarios are leaving more people worried about the impact of ebola virus outbreak. However, there's something that the public should be more worried about. The disease is contracted if there is a direct contact with blood or bodily fluids of an affected person. Sooner or later, if things go spiral, you might acquire the deadly virus by just breathing.
Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, warned through an editorial post on the New York Times that ebola virus might mutate to become transmissible through air.
“You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice,” he wrote.
When this happens Osterholm said that disease could travel quickly from one country to another and then take over the whole world. The doctor cited a work by Canadian researchers in 2012 wherein they worked on the Ebola Zaire, a virus similar to the one that is terrorizing West Africa for months. According to the study, Ebola Zaire is transmissible through respiratory route from pigs to monkeys, two creatures whose lungs are somewhat similar to human's. Another work he made reference to is Richard Preston’s 1994 best seller “The Hot Zone” wherein at quarantine station, monkeys attracted the disease through breathing.
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