EBOLA VIRUS

• Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans.
• Baron Peter Piot is a Belgian microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS he discoverred the Ebola virus in 1976.
• EVD outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90%.
• EVD outbreaks occur primarily in remote villages in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.
• The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals(blood,bodily fluids) and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission.
• Fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are considered to be the natural host of the Ebola virus.
• Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. No licensed specific treatment or vaccine is available for use in people or animals.
• First appeared in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks, in Nzara, Sudan and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter was in a village situated near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name

SYMPTOMS

• The incubation period for Ebola is between 2 and 42 days. Patients are not contagious until they start to show signs of fever, aches, vomiting and diarrhoea.

INDIAN SCENARIO

• There is a risk the deadly virus could be imported into the country
• 45000 of Indians working in the four affected West African nations - working in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria - where an outbreak of the disease has killed 932 people.
• While the risk of Ebola virus cases in India is low, preparedness measures are in place to deal with any case of the virus imported to India. 
• set up facilities at airports and ports to manage travelers showing symptoms of the disease.
• State authorities have been instructed to designate hospitals with isolation wards for response to possible cases and to stock personal protective equipment.

DIFFICULTIES FOR INDIA To HANDLE EBOLA

• High incubation period ranging from 30-42 days of ebola.
• Symptons similar to malaria and dengu so difficult to seggregate ebola pateint.
• Health center illequipped e.g center has disperesed only 50,000 ebola kit but insuffucient to handle such a vast population.
• Human resource in health sector such as NURSES and WARD boys are illeuipped with jumpsuits and gloves to treat ebola pateint. Moreover India does not have enough experience to cure such contagious virus.
• West bengal IDSP (Integrated Disease Survellience Program) mandated that outbrak of diease should gather information and send it out to health sectors but lack of infrastructure such as computers make it difficult.
• Their are only two labs NCDC new delhi and National Institute of Virology (NIV) for studying virus.

GLOBAL SCENARIO

• Ebola spreaded to U.S
• Ebola spreaded to Europe first case founded in SPAIN.