A GLOBAL HEALTH EMERGENCY

WHO DECLARES EBOLA OUTBREAK

How is the disease transmitted?

Since Ebola is a viral disease, transmission occurs upon contact with the bodily fluids of an infected animal or human being, either directly through a needle or from exposure through broken skin.

Congo’s Ebola outbreak may be controllable now. Here’s how

The virus derives its name from the 250-km long Ebola river which flows through Congo and at a point is over 60-km from Yambuku, the rural Congolese area where some of the first patients of the disease were reported.

Clinical trials conducted amid an Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have identified two new drugs that can dramatically cut mortality from the disease.

REGN-EB3; mAb114

• The drug mAb114 was developed using antibodies harvested from survivors of Ebola while REGN-EB3 comes from antibodies generated within mice infected with the disease.
• The two anti-Ebola drugs tested in the DRC employ monoclonal antibodies — protein molecules made by the immune system in response to infection. The drugs work by attacking the Ebola virus with antibodies, neutralising its impact on human cells.
  • REGN-EB3 cuts mortality rates to 29% and
  • mAb114 cuts mortality rate to 34%.
    They are the “first drugs that, in a scientifically sound study, have clearly shown a significant diminution in mortality” Preliminary results from 499 patients suggest that prompt use of –
• The experimental drugs will now be used to treat patients infected with the viral disease in an ongoing outbreak in the DRC.

If the final results of Merck’s preventive vaccine trial and the two drugs to treat the disease do not spring any adverse surprise, Ebola, which has had a free run so far, is all set to be tamed.

Ebola is a viral hemorrhagic fever that kills up to 90% of those it infects. The latest outbreak, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has so far killed nearly 1,900 people. 

Image Credits: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-slow-burn-of-congos-ebola-outbreak-demands-a-redefinition-of-america-first/2019/08/19/73f24b06-c2bd-11e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html?noredirect=on

Source: The Hindu