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The biggest
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What happens
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The letter we all

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Have we learned
anything about
Ebola since
1976?

Pigs, plants and the Black Death: Have we learned

anything about Ebola since 1976?
This story was published: 1 DAY AGO

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OCTOBER 18, 2014 12:21PM

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What is Ebola?

YOU might think our knowledge of Ebola would have grown since the virus was
first diagnosed in 1976.
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But looking at past reports, its not clear weve learned much.
With previous outbreaks affecting just a few hundred people a year, and mostly
confined to Africa, we may have been complacent.

STORY BY

EMMA REYNOLDS

But now cases number in the thousands, its time to consider whether we missed a
number of opportunities to prevent this crisis.
Confjne.
Complacent
May have been
Just

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Ebola in the news from 1976 to 2014

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HEALTH PHOTOS

Golden girl Stephanie Rice

JULY 1979
Infectious plagues have not been, nor are they likely soon to be, eliminated from
our world, according to medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
The article compared Ebola with the lethal Marburg disease, noting that African
monkeys were not at first identified as sources of that virus. Lc u ko xc nh,
nhng ngun vuts

Thus the origins of the devastating epidemics caused by Ebola virus in Sudan and
Zaire was completely obscure to the international teams rapidly assembled to deal
with them in 1976. Ngun, ko r i vi team, bnh dch tn
ph

Mortality rates ranged from 50 to 60 per cent in Sudan to nearly 90 per cent in Zaire,
said the paper just like today.
SeveralTfeatures
of these
and frightening, it added,
l t vong
50, epidemics
60 ti, nwere
gnnoteworthy
90 ti

Elles most iconic covers

Vi c im, ng lu , ng s

Several features of these epidemics were noteworthy and frightening, it added,

relating the death of a patient bleeding and in shock after a week of fever.

50 years of Pirelli calendars

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The Australian government bought 12 isolators to be used in case of infection. Source: Supplied

JANUARY 1982
Concerned by the spread of Ebola and other viruses to Europe and the US, the
Australian government bought 12 isolators for transporting infectious patients to
quarantine, The Canberra Times reported.
Doctors at Melbourne hospital Fairfield told the paper they hoped they would never
Ni ti, hy vng, s ko bao gi xi ti
be needed.
The isolators were lightweight units that cost $1200 each and could be carried by
four people.
Each consisted of a stretcher to hold patient and air-supply unit, with a plastic cover
fitted with gloved sleeves suspended over it from a frame.
The contraptions were still being used six years later. The department of health said
that while the risk of a person contracting Lassa fever, Ebola, Marburg or CrimeanCongo haemorrhagic fever was relatively low, it was a real risk.

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JULY 1991
Dr Murphy uses one word to describe his reaction to looking at an electron
microscope images of long, thin particles of the deadly Ebola virus: Scary.
The world was focused on the threat of AIDS, but an American scientist visiting
Australia warned that Ebola also posed a risk, The Canberra Times reported.

Tp trung, e do, cng dn ns risk

Dr Fred Murphy from the Centre for Infectious Disease Control in Georgia had
observed the Ebola virus in the 1970s, and in 1989 saw it isolated from monkeys
imported by air from the Philippines.
He showed that viruses that are harmless or only moderately lethal in monkeys
could cause lethal epidemics in a larger primate species namely, humans. It has
already happened at least three times.
The newspaper said AIDS seemed to have crossed to humans, probably in Africans
whose immune systems were weakened by malnutrition or the parasite diseases ...
The West may be paying a heavy price for its neglect of human health in Third
World countries.

A Canberra Times image from an Ebola story in 1995. Source: Supplied

MARCH 1995
A letter to ANU newspaper Woronis Weird Science column asked: How dangerous
are viruses and diseases to the human race? Could a virus like the Ebola virus or
AIDS make us extinct?
The writer replied that Ebola although hasnt gone to the outside world yet, lesser
versions of it have been known to kill large chunks of villages.
He described the virus as getting into the brain, sending the victim mad and breaking
down cell walls until they become a pile of goo.
He continued: If something like the Ebola virus hit somewhere in Australia, the area
would be sectioned off for a few weeks, confusion would reign, most people in the
area would die.
Nu n ging xung, mi ngi c l s

A 1990s Ebola graphic from The Canberra Times shows we know little more now. Source: Supplied

MAY 1995
The World Health Organisation said deaths had reached their highest level since
1976, and that a second outbreak had occurred.
WHOs assistant director said Ebola was one of the deadliest viruses we know but
was not a public-health emergency in the sense of a wild spread.
Another WHO official said the virus seems to be a self-limiting disease, reported
the Associated Press.
WHO said two of three previous outbreaks had originated in hospitals with very poor
hygiene and a third was caused by African funeral rituals that involve cutting open a
corpse.
Bng n dch, b ngun t, d, tp qun m
ma chu phi

Once you institute precautions, and make sure youre not using contaminated
needles, you can contain the virus, said CDC infectious disease specialist Dr Ruth
Berkelman.
But the head of WHOS Africa office said the danger of the virus spreading could
not be ruled out with the Congolese city of Kikwit (site of the second outbreak)
accessible by air.

T vong, cao nht t nm

SEPTEMBER 1999
The hunt for a cure was on, with the Times Higher Education Supplement looking at
research into a folk cure used in traditional African medicine.
It said that little was known of the molecular biology of the virus or the mechanisms
by which it caused disease.
A plant extract derived from the seeds of the Garcinia kola tree was believed by the
Bio-Resources Development and Conservation program to inhibit the virus.
The Maryland institute now needed funding to develop the research, wrote The
Times, but the main barrier may be financial.
Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest resources in the development of
drugs against extremely rare tropical diseases, it added.

Cng ty dc, ngi (th vo khi mun ni" dont

want/like), u t ti nguyn

An Ebola virus image from a 1999 Stanford medical paper. Source: Supplied

DECEMBER 2000
With annual cases in the hundreds again, the New York Times related the tales of
Ebola survivors.
Ugandans who had seen others die in pools of blood told of spouses leaving them
and neighbours burning belongings and even homes, despite their poverty.
Many were shunned by their communities, or had walls built around them as fear
spread. An education campaign was in progress to ensure survivors were accepted
back into their towns.
There were four known strains, with the worst still killing 90 per cent of those who
caught it.
The article reported that the outbreak appeared to have run its course. But a Ugandan
Red Cross worker admitted: Even now, Im afraid. If you joke with Ebola it will
joke with you.

Contemporary artwork from the Black Death. Source: News Limited

FEBRUARY 2002
Could Ebola have been behind the Black Death? asked ABC News.
Researchers said the speed of the medieval illnesss spread tallied with Ebola more
than the bubonic plague.
They said that historical descriptions of the Black Death sounded like the
haemorrhagic fever caused by an Ebola-like virus.
Ging xung ci rm

Such fever strikes fast and causes blood vessels to burst underneath the skin,
bringing out welts, similar to what British medical texts from the Middle Ages
describe as Gods tokens, they noted.

The search for a drug that can fight Ebola continues. Source: AFP

NOVEMBER 2012

Xi linked with khi mun ni "caused by"

Ebola had by now been linked with fruit bats, monkeys, insects, birds and pigs but
now a study suggested that the deadliest form of the virus could be transmitted by air
between species, said the BBC.
Scientists from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found that pigs infected with
this form of Ebola could pass the disease on to macaques without any direct contact
between the species.
Dr Gary Kobinger said that if pigs did play a role in human outbreaks it would be a
very easy point to intervene. It would be easier to vaccinate pigs against Ebola than
humans.
Dr Larry Zeitlin, president of Mapp Biopharmaceuticals, told BBC News: Its an
impressive study that not only raises questions about the reservoir of Ebola in the
wild, but more importantly elevates concerns about Ebola as a public health threat.
The thought of airborne transmission is pretty frightening.

ngh ca sth ng s

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