October 26, 2014

Fear of Ebola versus fear of AIDS...a very interesting story

Ebola: From Microscope to Spotlight

Here are some snips of the article from Emory Hospital

International media coverage of the treatment of patients at Emory University Hospital (EUH), two patients sent to the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, and two cases at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has focused attention on the Ebola crisis and spurred increased response from the American government and governments around the world. This support is critical, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which warns that the disease could become endemic, infecting more than one million people by January, if efforts to thwart its spread are not “drastically escalated.”

At Emory, infectious diseases specialist Bruce Ribner had been preparing for twelve years to treat a case like Brantly’s.

In 2002, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) approached Emory with the request that the two organizations work together to develop a special isolation unit at EUH. They wanted a secure place to bring CDC employees—from the headquarters or from the field—who had been exposed to or infected with any number of dangerous pathogens.

Slabach remembers encountering the subject of Ebola as a high school student in Virginia when he read The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. The 1994 best seller examined the origins of the Ebola viruses and gave vivid descriptions of early outbreaks in Africa and one in a primate facility in Reston, Virginia, that had government agencies frantically working to identify and contain the deadly virus.

The gruesome depictions of Ebola’s symptoms in the book and in movies like Outbreak, as well as the widely publicized 40 to 90 percent mortality rate of the disease, were fuel for the explosion of negative public reaction that accompanied the first announcement that Brantly was being brought back to the US for treatment. Opponents lashed out in fear, and Ribner bore much of the impact.

(end of snips)

There's a lot more at link below. It really shows what the real human side of the fears and turmoils the medical workers went though. It makes the fear mongers of politicians seem so stupid. Just like in those early days of AIDS when it first came out.

http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/issues/2014/autumn/features/ebola.html?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign=

June 12, 2014

Cantor toon