Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever
| Ebola hemorrhagic fever is one of the most lethal and mysterious diseases in the world. It first emerged in Africa in 1976, and has been breaking out at times in Africa ever since. This disease is especially important to the fields of public health and epidemiology because it warned the world that the times of terribly infectious diseases like the Black Death are not so distant in the past. At the time, scientists and politicians had thought that most infectious disease could be eradicated from the Earth in a few short years. The emergence of a completely new virus brought them back to reality. It also reminded humans of our mortality. Many people think that Ebola first emerged because of human spread into the jungles of Africa. As human sprawl increased and forest decreased, the vector for Ebola was most likely displaced from its native habitat and put into contact with humans. The emergence of a virus as deadly as Ebola raised many questions in the scientific community. Where did this virus come from? If something so deadly was hidden from humanity for so long, what else is still in store for us as we continue to expand deeper and deeper into nature’s domain? |