B I K E R S C L U B ® | www.bikersclub.in
ISSUE 04 | APRIL 2020
Marburg virus HIV
Scientists identified the Marburg virus in 1967 when a
small outbreak occurred among lab workers in
Germany who were exposed to infected monkeys
imported from Uganda. Marburg virus is similar to
Ebola in that both can cause hemorrhagic fever,
meaning that infected people develop high fevers
and bleeding throughout the body that can lead to
shock, organ failure and death. In the modern world, the deadliest virus of all may be HIV.
"It is still the one that is the biggest killer," said
Dr Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and
spokesman for the Infectious Disease Society of
America.
The mortality rate in the first outbreak was 25%, but it
was more than 80% in the 1998-2000 outbreak in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as in the 2005
outbreak in Angola, according to the World Health
Organization (WHO).
Ebola virus
The first known Ebola outbreak in humans struck
simultaneously in the Republic of Sudan and the
Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976. Ebola is
spread through contact with blood or other body
fluids, or tissue from infected people or animals. The
known strains vary dramatically in their deadlines,
Elke Muhlberger an Ebola virus expert and associate
professor of microbiology at Boston University, told
Live Science.
One strain, Ebola Reston, doesn't even make people
sick. But for the Bundibugyo strain, the fatality rate is
up to 50%, and it is up to 71% for the Sudan strain,
according to WHO.
The outbreak underway in West Africa began in early
2014, and is the largest and most complex outbreak of
the disease to date, according to WHO.
Rabies
Although rabies vaccines for pets, which were
introduced in the 1920s, have helped make the
disease exceedingly rare in the developed world, this
condition remains a serious problem in India and
parts of Africa.
"It destroys the brain, it's a really, really bad disease,"
Muhlberger said. "We have a vaccine against rabies,
and we have antibodies that work against rabies, so if
someone gets bitten by a rabid animal we can treat
this person," she said.
However, she said, "if you don't get treatment, there's
a 100% possibility you will die.
An estimated 32 million people have died from HIV
since the disease was first recognized in the early
1980s. "The infectious disease that takes the biggest
toll on mankind right now is HIV," Adalja said.
Powerful antiviral drugs have made it possible for
people to live for years with HIV. But the disease
continues to devastate many low-and middle-income
countries, where 95% of new HIV infections occur.
Nearly 1 in every 25 adults within the WHO African
region is HIV-positive, accounting for more than two-
thirds of the people living with HIV worldwide.
Smallpox
In 1980, the World Health Assembly declared the
world free of smallpox. But before that, humans
battled smallpox for thousands of years, and the
disease killed about 1 in 3 of those it infected. It left
survivors with deep, permanent scars and, often,
blindness.
Mortality rates were far higher in populations outside
of Europe, where people had little contact with the
virus before visitors brought it to their regions. For
example, historians estimate 90% of the native
population of the Americans died from smallpox
introduced by European explorers. In the 20th
century alone, smallpox killed 300 million people.
"It was something that had a huge burden on the
planet, not just death but also blindness, and that's
what spurred the campaign to eradicate from the
Earth."
Hantavirus
Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) first gained
wide attention in the U.S. in 1993, when a healthy,
young Navajo man and his fiancee living in the Four
Corners area of the United States died within days of
developing shortness of breath. A few months later,
health authorities isolated hantavirus from a deer
mouse living in the home of one of the infected
people. More than 600 people in the U.S. have now
contracted HPS, and 36% have died from the disease,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.