Fever,\nvomiting and severe diarrhoea are among the symptoms of the highly infectious\nand extremely lethal Ebola virus, which has claimed thousands of lives in a\nseries of outbreaks in Africa since 1976.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With\nthe Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) latest outbreak spreading to Uganda,\nthese are some facts about the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Super lethal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The\naverage fatality rate from Ebola is around 50percent, varying from 25 to 90\npercent, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nvirus is highly contagious, making it difficult to contain especially in urban\nenvironments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\nis transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads among humans though\nclose contact with the blood, body fluids, secretions or organs of an infected\nperson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ebola\nis believed to reside in bats, which do not themselves fall ill but can pass it\non.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chimpanzees,\ngorillas, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines can also become infected, and\nhumans who kill and eat these animals can catch the virus through them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fever, bleeding<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n People\nwho are infected do not become contagious until symptoms appear, which is after\nan incubation period of between two and 21 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n High\nfever, weakness, intense muscle and joint pain, headaches and a sore throat are\noften followed by vomiting and diarrhoea, skin eruptions, kidney and liver\nfailure, internal and external bleeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After-effects\nhave often been observed in survivors, including arthritis, problems with\nvision, eye inflammation and hearing difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Treatment and vaccine<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n At\npresent there is no licenced drug to prevent or treat Ebola although a range of\nexperimental drugs are in development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After\nthe DRC’s 10th outbreak started in August, health authorities there began\nissuing the rVSV-Zebov vaccine on a large scale for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Developed\nby Merck laboratories, the vaccine is unlicensed but has been widely shown to\nbe safe and effective, and the WHO has called for its deployment to be\nexpanded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fever, vomiting and severe diarrhoea are among the symptoms of the highly infectious and extremely lethal Ebola virus, which has claimed thousands of lives in a series of outbreaks in Africa since 1976. With the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) latest outbreak spreading to Uganda, these are some facts about the virus. Super lethal The average […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2270,"featured_media":9700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_paywall_metabox":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9699"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9701,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9699\/revisions\/9701"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugmirror.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}