Ebola Virus

Ebola virus is one of the deadliest viruses in the world, and a cure for which has not yet been discovered. Ebola virus infection is called Ebola hemorrhagic fever (Ebola HF). The virus is named after the Ebola River where the first case of the disease had occurred.

Eboli virus

After the virus infection, there is an incubation period of about 2 to 20 days before the symptoms start to show. At the beginning, an infected person will have fever, muscle aches, headache, weakness, which then followed by diarrhea, vomiting. As the Ebola virus targets the endothelium inside the body, blood vessel walls, organs linings, digestive tract linings will all be damaged from the infection eventually. As a result, patients start to bleed internally and externally.

If a person is detected to have Ebola virus infection, the individual has to be isolated, as Ebola is a highly contagious virus. Among humans, Ebola virus can be transmitted from infected patients to people simply by contacts of body part. (body fluids, skin, mucous membrane) Although this disease is highly transmissible, contacting patients in early stage may not be infected.

To date, there is still no cure for Ebola HF. Medications are given to patients to ease their symptoms. The patients have to depend on their immune systems to fight against the deadly virus. The mortality rate for the disease can be up to 89%, whereby most of the patients die from organs failure.

Swine flu - The latest Epidemic

Influenza A, H1N1, commonly known as Swine flu, was first identified in April 2009. After the infection, this virus can spread from an infected person to other people, triggering the latest epidemic.

First of all, what is a ‘Swine flu virus’?

Swine flu virus is found to have a mixture of the genetics of 4 strains of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, the Human influenza (which causes flu in human), Avian influenza (causes flu in birds), and 2 types of Swine influenza (cause flu in pigs). However, preliminary analysis from scientists suggested that this H1N1 virus was originated from pigs.

H1N1 virus

Symptoms?

People who are infected by the Swine flu virus have a very wide range of symptoms, such as fever, cough, sore throat, headache, chills, runny nose etc, which is very similar to common flu. The symptoms may seem to be mild; however complications could lead to severe cases. This airborne strain of virus can be spread from person to person easily through sneezes from infected people. Incubation period from infection to the showing of symptoms ranged from 2 to 7 days.

Up to date, there is still no vaccine available to cure the illness. Medications are given to soothe the symptoms the virus inflicted.

To combat this new strain of virus, personal hygiene is the key prevention. As this is an airborne virus, avoid crowded areas and wear surgical masks when necessary. There is no reason to avoid eating pork because this new strain of virus is called ‘Swine flu”. H1N1 virus is not transmissible from pork products to human.

H1N1 virus