Rare Footage Shows Discovery Of Ebola In 1976

[MHSC]

Videos & more here http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6024194

In the fall of 1976, an international team of researchers arrived in Yambuku, a small village in the north of Zaire, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The researchers had traveled thousands of miles to research a mysterious illness that was spreading rapidly and had killed many in the area.

Doctors had first learned of the disease in September of that year, when a thermos carrying blood samples from a Belgian nun working in Yambuku arrived at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. Initial suspicions that the nurse was infected with the deadly Marburg virus proved wrong, and an international team assembled to travel to the village and identify the disease.

In Yambuku, the doctors would be the first to witness the horrific effects of Ebola, the disease whose most recent outbreak has killed nearly 5,000 people in West Africa in the past few months.

 

[AlaskaDenise]

Re: Rare Footage Shows Discovery Of Ebola In 1976

powerpoint of the work on 1976 Zaire ebola. Note the lab photo - slide 8.

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[zincfinger]

Re: Rare Footage Shows Discovery Of Ebola In 1976

Videos & more here http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6024194

In the fall of 1976, an international team of researchers arrived in Yambuku, a small village in the north of Zaire, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The researchers had traveled thousands of miles to research a mysterious illness that was spreading rapidly and had killed many in the area.

Doctors had first learned of the disease in September of that year, when a thermos carrying blood samples from a Belgian nun working in Yambuku arrived at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium. Initial suspicions that the nurse was infected with the deadly Marburg virus proved wrong, and an international team assembled to travel to the village and identify the disease.

In Yambuku, the doctors would be the first to witness the horrific effects of Ebola, the disease whose most recent outbreak has killed nearly 5,000 people in West Africa in the past few months.

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Thank you. That contains verification of what I've long said and been accused elsewhere of fabricating:

"Piot explained that once in Yambuku, the team discovered that two elements were common to almost all of the victims: funeral rites and a visit to the Yambuku Mission Hospital.

Prolonged and intense contact with the bodies of deceased Ebola patients during the funeral rites made the burials extremely lethal. At the mission hospital, many non-Ebola patients had been infected after treatment with unsterilized syringes that carried the infection."

Serial passage is well known to increase virulence in many viral species. It is highly likely that the reuse of non sterile needles enabled the successful leap into humans of HIV and is currently doing much the same with Ebola, IMHO. Reuse of non sterile needles gives an emerging disease a far larger "window of opportunity" in which to adapt enough to become endemic in humans. Disease that otherwise would have died out can, as a direct result, adapt and become endemic.

There are areas where 10% of the population have antibodies to Ebola. It obviously has been around for a long time without causing more than very localized infections that quickly died out, contained by the traditional practice of confining the infected in their homes (and providing food and water) until they lived or died. It is highly likely that the well intentioned but ill executed interventions and attempts by the West are a significant factor in initially exacerbating the outbreaks and IMHO one of the largest factors in enabling this one to escape containment (the other large contribution factor being the severe deprivation of resources and degradation of social structure (which the West also bears a major portion of direct responsibility for causing).

Not only is it clearly in the West's own best interest to control this outbreak as rapidly and effectively as possible, it also has a moral obligation to do so given its very large contributions to the factors which caused it to occur.

Severe disparity of wealth causes a vast number of serious dysfunctions and this is only one of many such examples. We cannot possibly effectively deal with such complex and potentially world economy devastating events without addressing all of the major contributing factors.

"We have met the enemy and he is us!" Walt Kelly