Contents page 1 — The Virus in the bat-page 2 — In the Congo is the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history is running On a page to read
The Ebola Virus is hiding. For the past four decades, researchers try to understand researchers, where the Virus is located in the nature, before it skips to the people. The search is sometimes frustrating and the results are puzzling, but at the same time important. Because it is spread the Virus once on the people, it causes epidemics with sometimes hundreds or Thousands dead, as is the case with the epidemic in West Africa between 2013 and 2016. At the time, 11,000 people died as a result of the Virus.
This week have shown researchers the Virus for the first time with a bat in West Africa. In a press release of the Ministry of health of Liberia, it means, it was a long wings of a bat of the species Miniopterus inflatus, which lived in caves and from insects fed. That this species of bat can transmit Ebola, was not previously known. The result could help according to a statement, “to develop strategies to reduce the risk of further epidemics”.
Only one positive sample among Thousands
The discovery made researchers of a consortium: in addition to the authorities of Liberia, the NGO EcoHealth Alliance and Columbia University were involved from New York. The consortium wants to come to the origin of the devastating West African epidemic is closer. It has already gathered 11,000 samples from animals, of which, according to the virologists, Simon Anthony, a lecturer at Columbia University, only a quarter was analysed. The recorded sample, which was taken the end of 2016, on the border with Guinea, is the first, which was positive.
facts about Ebola What is Ebola?
Ebola is a Virus of the highest biological protection, better to have a Virus that is extremely dangerous and very contagious said. Under the microscope it looks like a thread sometimes loops, a earthworm is not dissimilar.
The Virus belongs to the family of Filoviruses and is divided into five types. The sub-species are different dangerous. Most of the symptoms of the disease in the first three weeks of the infection.
the Virus in 1976, was Discovered by a group of researchers in the infectious disease, Peter Piot, in the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, lying to, not far from the current Outbreak. This gave the Virus the name Ebola, is due to a quirky coincidence. The researchers wanted to name the Virus after the place of the outbreak, Yambuku,. Because then, they feared, would remain the Name of the village forever with a deadly Virus. Therefore, Piot and his colleagues decided to name the Virus after a river that was on the map, the researcher directly next to the village of Yambuku. When the card proved to be faulty and it turned out that the river Ebola was a whole piece away, it was too late: The Virus has already had a name.
