Ebola in Ghana – A Story Of Defeating Ebola

Did you know Ebola is not a new virus? Well, it’s not and it startedall the back in 1976. The effect of Ebola in Ghana was really bad but before we understand what’s going on, we need to first understand when and where it first started.

The first outbreak of the Ebola virus was all the back in 1976 when Ebola-infected 284 people in Zaire and Sudan.Since Zaire and Sudan were the first two locations where Ebola Virus was first reported, they decided to name it after the Ebola River in Zaire and that’s how it got its name.

Ghana Health Services had the opposite to say

At that point, the mortality rate was only at 53% which is way lower than what it is right now and this particular strain was called EBOS (Ebola-Sudan). After a couple of months, a second strain of the Ebola emerged before patients could even recover from the first one.

The second one had the highest mortality rate of 82% and managed to infect around 318 people. The second strain was named EBOZ (Ebola-Zaire). Even with multiple safety checks and internal quarantine, it was spreading fast and its mutation was also very strong.

At this point, stopping the spread of the disease seemed almost impossible as the third strain of the virus was also found. It happened in the year 1989 and it was named EBOR (Ebola-Reston). The 3rd strain came into existence when a few people came in content with an infected test monkey when he was being sent to other countries such as Reston, Virginia, among others for research purposes.

The diagnosis required for Ebola-infected patient was very easy as these patients would develop Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF) as a symptom but a few people who actually contracted the third strain of the virus, didn’t show any symptoms of Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever and so the doctors couldn’t tell if they were infected and so later, they died.

Many other strains came into existence and each having its own set of symptoms but the last known strain of the virus is Ebola Cote d’Ivoire and it was discovered in the year 1994. The country Cote d’Ivoire being so close to Ghana, it was inevitable and rumor has it that quite a few people from Ghana got infected.

But Ghana Health Services had the opposite to say. According to the post issued by the Ghana Health Services on Twitter, Ghana hasn’t had a single Ebola viruscase and somehow managed to survive in this period of time while the rest of Africa suffered quite a lot.

For example, Guinea, on the other hand, has reportedly found three cases on Feb 14 but none of them survived. Due to this, Dr. Patrick, the Director-General of the service reportedly ordered all hospitals to initiate a response plan for this disease and to isolate these patients as much as possible.

But to ensure that the public doesn’t panic as well, the GHS reportedly decided to issue a statement where he mentioned that Ghana is officially Ebola-free as of now and asks its citizen to ignore the report that says Ghana has a confirmed case. Since Ghana is a neighboring town of Cote d’Ivoire, it is currently at high risk.

While they say a lot of things, Africa’s inadequacies for disease surveillance and its lackluster response system have already shown just how unprepared the country really is and at this rate of spread, things can go even worse.

The issue with Ghana Health Service’s report is that while it did report zero cases, there could be errors as the hospital didn’t have infrared thermometers, isolation centers, and ineffective screening and so there is a high chance that the report from Ghana Health Service could be wrong.

So how powerful is this really is? Well, for starters, it now has a mortality rate of 90% and that is enough for anyone to understand just how fatal it is. Ebola is very rare and yet fatal and its symptoms include fever, body pain, both internal bleeding, and external through tiny pores in the skin.

When the virus starts to proceed through the body of the patient, it severely damages the immune system and can cause major organ failure. As more and more white blood cells and platelets keep dying, the blood on the patient’s body will fail to form any new clots and will start to bleed out right through your skin. The bleeding can be mild to severe bleeding which can result in death due to extreme blood loss.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *