Richard Preston - "The Hot Zone"

This is how Ebola virus looks like under microscope...

Now, what this picture shows to us? Well, when I say it first time, it did not show me nothing much. I knew it was a virus, because that was written. So, probably for most of us, who are not doctors or at least nurses, picture will not say much.

So, what is then EBOLA?

Viral Hemorrhagic  Fever (or shorter VHF) or EBOLA, is a virus who got name after Ebola River Valley in former Zaire, now DR Congo in Africa.  It belong to a family of viruses called Filoviridae. First time Ebola emerged in Zaire, in 1976. There are 4 recognised types of Ebola, and those are: Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Reston and Ebola Cote d’Ivoire. First one, Ebola Zaire, is the worst one. It can kills 9 of 10 of its victims. First outbreak of Ebola Zaire can show its fatality. In 1976 in former Zaire was 318 reported human cases of Ebola. 280 people finished dead.

Incubation period can range between 2 and 21 days. Symptoms are fever, headache, abdominal pain, bloody vomit, malaise, chest pain, diarrhea and much more. It is not strange for Ebola to “fool” doctors and be “reported” as a Malaria, Influenza, Bacterial infection. Virus can be diagnosed with ELISA test (short form for  Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay).

Treatment… Scariest part is that there is NO standard treatment for Ebola. It is usually primarly supportive, and it includes balancing electrolytes, replacing lost coagulation factors to stop bleeding, maintaining oxygen and blood levels, and treating infection.

The cause of dead is usually due to hypovolemic  shock or organ failure.

*This would be is short lines about Ebola. Now, why am I writing this?

Some time ago, I went to a library. Looking for something interesting. So, there it was. “The Hot Zone” from Richard Preston.  Now, after I finished little about MAIN thing in book, I will not give too much of my opinion. Except that part of me was terrified and other part fascinated. I will give you now one small part of Preston’s TRUE story, about something so deadly and pain full, that you can not imagine…

.....

Pg 16

The man is bleeding, and they will admit him in just a moment. He must wait until a doctor can be called, but the doctor will see him immediately, not to worry. He sits down in the waiting room.

It is a small room lined with padded benches. The clear, strong, ancient light of East Africa pours through a row of windows and falls across a table heaped with soiled magazines, and makes rectangles on a pebbled gray floor that has a drain in the center. The room smells vaguely of woodsmoke and sweat, and it is jammed with bleary-eyed people, Africans and Europeans sitting shoulder to shoulder. There is always someone in Casualty who has a cut and is waiting for stitches. People wait patiently, holding a washcloth against the scalp, holding a bandage pressed around a finger, and you may see a spot of blood on the cloth. So, Charles Monet is sitting on a bench in Casualty, and he does not look very much different from anyone else in the room, except for his bruised, expressionless face and his red eyes. A sign on the wall warns patients to watch out for purse thieves, and another sign says:

PLEASE, MAINTAIN SILENCE. YOUR COOPERATION WILL BE APPRICIETED. NOTE: THIS IS CASUALTY DEPARTMENT. EMERGENCY CASES WILL BE TAKEN IN PRIORITY. YOU MAY BE REQUIRED TO WAIT FOR SUCH CASES BEFORE RECEIVING ATTENTION.

Monet maintains silence, waiting to receive attention. Suddenly he goes into the last phase. The human virus bomb explodes. Military biohazard specialist have ways of describing this occurrence. The say that the victim has “crashed and bled out”. Or more politely they say that the victim has “gone down”.

He becomes dizzy and utterly weak, and his spin goes limp and nerveless and he loses all sense of balance. The room is turning around and around. He is going into shock. He leans over, head on his knees, and brings up an incredible quantity of blood from his stomach and spills it onto the floor with gasping groan. He loses consciousness and pitches forward onto the floor. The only sound is a chocking in his throat as he continues to vomit while unconscious. Then comes a sound like bed sheet being torn in half, which is sound of his bowels opening and venting blood from the anus. The blood is mixed with intestinal lining. He has sloughed his gut. The lining of his intestines have come off and are being expelled along with huge amounts of blood. Monet has crashed and is bleeding out.

The other patients in the waiting room stands up and move away from the man on the floor, calling for a doctor. Pools of blood spread out around him, enlarging rapidly. Having destroyed its host, the agent is now coming out of every orifice, and is “trying” to find a new host.

…….