Thread: Meanwhile, in West Africa, Ebola works quietly away.

Originally Posted by 200tdi ayre

As soon as it hits a major city it will be Very Very hard to stop unfortunately. 50-80% mortality rate ...

Off topic, but my departed Father in law came from Finley, Myles McCormack. Natures gentleman, Bob

And it continues.


Ebola: 50 cases and 25 deaths reported in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea | World news | theguardian.com

And again, Bob


BBC News - Sierra Leone chief Ebola doctor infected

And more, Bob


BBC News - Ebola outbreak: Sierra Leone escaped patient dies

Meanwhile the world is still spending 1747.0 billion $ on military expenditure.

List of countries by military expenditures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by lebanon

Meanwhile the world is still spending 1747.0 billion $ on military expenditure.

List of countries by military expenditures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You don't have to be a genius to predict an uncertain future for Planet Earth, and its inhabitants. Bob

Originally Posted by bob10

When does it become a international worry? Bob


BBC News - Ebola death toll in West Africa rise to 467, WHO says

When someone from Hollywood dies from it, like AIDs, malaria, TB. Which one gets the attention, which one kills the most.

Ref; BBC News - The virus detective who discovered Ebola in 1976

"When we opened the thermos, we saw that one of the vials was broken and blood was mixing with the water from the melted ice," says Piot.

He and his colleagues were unaware just how dangerous that was. As the blood leaked into the icy water so too did a deadly unknown virus.

The samples were treated like numerous others the lab had tested before, but when the scientists placed some of the cells under an electron microscope they saw something they didn't expect.

"We saw a gigantic worm like structure - gigantic by viral standards," says Piot. "It's a very unusual shape for a virus, only one other virus looked like that and that was the Marburg virus."

-------------

Two weeks later Piot, who had never been to Africa before, was on a flight to Kinshasa. "It was an overnight flight and I couldn't sleep. I was so excited about seeing Africa for the first time, about investigating this new virus and about stopping the epidemic."

The journey didn't end in Kinshasa - the team had to travel to the centre of the outbreak, a village in the equatorial rainforest, about 1,000km (620 miles) further north.

"The personal physician of President Mobutu, the leader of Zaire at that time, arranged a C-130 transport aircraft for us," recalls Piot. They loaded a Landrover, fuel and all the equipment they needed on to the plane.

Unloading the Landover from the C-130 plane in Bumba



-------------------------

Piot and his colleagues had learned a lot about the virus during three months in Yambuku, but it still lacked a name.

"We didn't want to name it after the village, Yambuku, because it's so stigmatising. You don't want to be associated with that," says Piot.

The team decided to name the virus after a river. They had a map of Zaire, although not a very detailed one, and the closest river they could see was the Ebola River. From that point on, the virus that arrived in a flask in Antwerp all those months earlier would be known as the Ebola virus.